Skip to main content

Full text of "Amiga Computing Magazine Issue 117"

See other formats 


'^nmr ■-■ 



f 



Issue 117 ■ Octobers 1997 ■ £4.99 






\M 



mnarnDDU 




i 






9 770959' 963091 



1 




why Apple? 



One day we all lio|U- to sec thf 
ri'hirih of ihe Aniisa v\iih a 
i'lrtMTJ't! processor ami other 
new I'eamrcs to enable it to 
comfwte again with lotlay's 
systems. Sadly liiniijih, mure 
ihari J years since Commodore'^ 
demise, iitllc of substance has 
actually happened. We've seen 
prototypes and heard promises... 
we all liope to see new .'\nii<!a 
developnietlts 

If you <|Sn't wait and need more 
pert'onriance today, without 
paying the eanh - there's only 
one real alternative to consider... 
There's nerer hem a twtier time 
to think .'Vppk'l 




• PowbI^ 603t 

• IBOHh; 
■ I6U3RA]/ 

• 2GS Ki-o Drvf 
•SSpeedCD 

• 15" Wegril 

• 2fi 8bp4 M«iem 

• tteign teybwrd 

• Fan.', SoiliVirp' 

•FAMILY PAa SOFTWARE IHCIUDES^ 

• Thjftttf!' 'Hiji^ 3 * Put JhrciK * PowflPete * Tbe Bki ot Elioomo Sofcei 

• Ctj/iitoU • HytBfCarii t1a>ef * tootwl Reader • Wadint Piii'j • AlEdse 

• Awie hww Cmneowi 61 • iffk Wkot 3 
Plus XTHA SOFTWARE.. •*«* Majt SofWM CoHeawi tifDiWj »id " ItetK! 




Only Apple offer you both 
desktop and ponaWe computers 
that truly match the ease of use 
the .■\mi.qa brought to yotir 
desktop, .'\ffordable A[)ple 
Macintosh systems ha\'e 
I'owcrl'C K!SC priKVssors with 
thousands of off-the-shelf 
programs ;!\-a liable in areas 
v\1iere the Amiga was aiway.s 
prc\'ioti.sl)' so strong. 

And. il you need the nitisl 
compatible of all cmnpulers. 
.Macintosh is cLirrently the only 
system that can run .\IacOS, 
DOS and Vi'lndows applications 
\ia optional DOS Cirds (tr 
SoftWindows software. 



• PowitK 6Bil 

• muki 

• 16Mb fMt 
.;• 1 Zob Hati Cms 

CDlour Mor.ilo' 

• FR££ Wf mt! 

:: f-:i!yi(j!A(sle«fHjfcd 
^ ■• mO 'j>e trtenet eaijy 
■*avc*ii MietnelMcesjtodsyt 




! IllicllKI.^.' 
- (,illlX-XWi> 



ONLY... 



Juit £S-66p£:rV<'ei.>* 



•CSEJTli/E STUDIO SOFTWARE iNaUDiS.. 

• KAI's Power Goo • Awd Cinema • Cubase AV • Dsbbier 

• Adobe PageMili • Adobe PhoioDeluxe • 3D World 

• ClickArt • Adua Soccer 















w 


Other 


~ 






HBl 


LOW 


SJU 


STAS 


WIALL 


^owerWIacs. 


► 


SHOW 


SELECTION FROM THE VA 


5T FIANCE Of AW 










COMPt 


/TERS 


WHICH ARE CURRENTLV 


AVAILABLE... 


^^,>«^ 


IBS 


:nj 


IW 


>c 


Iff 


U 


CN^ptft 


^r-pA 


i/*C 


AVi UoJOU )t?j<)0*rf 


imm 


180 


SBf 


16 


!Mi> 


JT 


^ 


lS-|»l.s.al 




X 


* ir'2£ B 0«^ 


PMSSOObtllK 


m 


an 


il 


iOufi 


X 


vn 


15- Neyi 




1/ 


X »^_-_!^ u-,;;- 


rmm 


IK. 


6» 


H 


143! 


X 


1'! 


is-«i*s 




X 


t i/l% ^ Of^r 


FMtSOO 


!X 


«)3- 


i; 


JOSt 


JC 


v\i 


\V <V U^ 




% 


r ^'li ■ :^r 


PMfSOO 


m 




y. 


i«» 


* 


in 


li-JVUli 
15- 1*5 




/ 


»' b';-: 1-'.i 


PIM4M 


If 


t % &!-*r. 


mim 


166 


6» 

60fe 






X 




V 




X 
* 


If IT [.^r-!-.; 


PMtSOD 


t 




K K C<I?rAS 


PMSsm 


^W 


X 


It % c<lrrjl..ti 



Portable 
Macs 



ittt'^m*^*^ 


H 


£1120 1 FS-MiUSCl 


Lr-. 




£1»2 S K(M(HC£ 




£1S3! i HWiDfBIi 




£25IS -ScfilT-.TITi.oO 




£11M > 




£1M! < 




£2*07 « 


^ 


[2813 I 


;i 



SHOWN BELOW IS JUST A SMALL SELECTtON FROM THE 

HUGE RANGE OF POWERBOOK MACIMTOSH 
. COMPUTERS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE... 

i«me;ii; u/ik-]. o< (tssc 

l«XltS/S17l&l(»3.0S. CD £1S!S 

14(lto/i17 l&ICOO. 05. CC. S-iSv'tiT.cr220C, Cyr; Cas £1761 

imOc/IB 1613K, i'.i, CD £2513 

SWOtflMl&lSCC, i.V £2936 

!400c/1B(l 15/1300 AV 125h«CD V!m\ £3171 

34001/100 J2/2O0O AM l2Si»iCD ElMtrtl So(IWi!i«« 3 1 1 Kill 

34IMC/2W 1 wood AM 12 SwMl CD Ef-eir p- (1SS9 



•• FMAILY WCK voftwaie is as delaijed abol* (s« 5^00/180 offw^ • CftEATJVf STUDIO sofTWdfe is a detail abmp 



■ Wfftse .WJjrf fftt' co;(po» rrrpboiw us - iivll nixh ]vii your FHB 




Wewton 
Handhelds 



SHOIVN BELOW iS JUST A SMALL SELECTION 
OF NEWTON HANOHiLD MESSAGEPAD 
PSODUCTVACCESSOlfES AVAILABLE... 



NeMon 2000 tttoigttai SI,';, iiiii; StiHr. £7E3 

NBwHjn200l>C«'ivCaie £34 

Newton 20OO Cd'ry Ca&e v.--:- ra-^ Jo.' Ktims/a £76 

NBVrtonZOCO-:^'^::::' £34 

NtMonlOOOe^"', fj:> £28 

NtwWB 30OO 4'.': : , ■ Uogn* f 10S 

Mtmton lOCO I - ,: . ; £76 

ALL current Newton models availsble afpng with [litir 
dccompanying pecif:tiera1s and soltware titles ■ CALL US 

Pact' SoHw.aw PLUS Cl.^:!^ trr.cEi:! .*r.(J Clairs Cr 1 1' .:^' ' 



..■:7f&., 



IVIr/Mrs/Mlss/HAs: 



Initial (s): 



Surname: 



Acidress: 



Daytime Phone: 




Evening Phone: 












Main usefs) of computer: 


HOIvlEi business! 


EDUCATION^ 


1 ... ■ -^ 



County or Country: 



Postcode: 



Current computer and accessories: 



IKfiifc cut tiui thf L'tiK/iWi mill yvUiin il IWE !o.. 
GORDON HARWOOD COMPUTERS • FREEPOST MID04091 • Dept CUA • NEW STREET • ALFRETON • DERBYSHIRE • DE55 9BR 

Tel: 01773 836781 • Fax; 01773 831040 • e-mail: infoeghc.co.uk 

.i:,W'.i'>n:*^-'««««'«'f««'"'<™''"«<<'^*'™'"'"'*"'«^''^^ 



Why Macintosh?- 



iSj 



.f.nTimai 




All Mic-^ ii:o PowerPC based Evtn entry' kvel desktc^ 
systems nin .n l60MHz or ISOMHz, with 275MHz 
powerhouses and 2O0 MH? mulli-proct'ssor sys'tems at 
the lop of the ran^e. Hven portables offer 240MHz! 

Apple Ls iht' only maimtream computer company 
who has been able to make the transition 
from the alder CISC (complex instiuction set 
cumputingj processors to the newer and f-ijulcr 
RJSC (reduced iasiruaion set compuiin^) processor 
technnlo^y - whibl slill relsining full backward 
conipaiibility with prcvioiLS softis'are. 
RL-mfmbtT 486. Pentiunx^Pro !k m)X{} are merely CISC! 

Over 1.HO0 nativf software package,s fwriiten 
specially for PowerPC Processor Macs) have 
been shipped since Power Macs wefe 
laiirichtti in 1994 - plus there are thousands 
of esisiing progrdms which can also be used. 
Industry standard programs such as Word. 
Pagestreani- U'orci Perfect, Page FileMaker Pro, 
Excel. Quark Xprev'., Ph"inshop and many 
iJihors have all been <Jeveioped for iIil- M.k 



The Internet & Communication: 



• All Macs ari' Inlcrnci rc:idy; iitiny include f^' ^ 
a 28,8 or 33.6 nioclL-m wiih full send'receive "wffiN^^^ 
fax and answcrpiioTie management facilities. ^^ 

• Indusii)' standard web browsers. Netscape 

i ^^ • tt Navigator and Microsoft Internet E.xplorer, 
\ 1^1' *^'* ''•^^''^'opcd for the Mac. Both give fiiil access 
i .- ji.^tli*^ to ail Web site."* with new Internet pa^e layout 
.^^^ 








• Macintosh still dominates ihe creative f 
worid with ar; 8CBy market share in 
cobur pubJiz-hitig. 

• 65% t^ po6i-prottuction video editing is go >1acs. 

• Macintosh is the most widely used sy^^e^n for the 
creation of internet web page^. 

• Most iiia^gazifies (prol>:ibly the one voi^reading 
right n(}wl are created on Macintosh. 

• Apple Is Uie World's No. 1 MuiitmedJa 
PC vendor. 

• AJ] desktop Maci have a f:isi CE>-KOM dn\e 
as standard (many portables havt" internai CO^ (ik>1 

• In 1995, 42 of ihe top 50 .wiling CD-ROM utle> 
worldwide were developed on die .\iaoniovh 

• Many Macintoshes base built-in TV with teletext 
so TV' ciips can be recorded directly to disk 3a 
QuickTime movies. 

• Many Macintoshes have built-in video 
in and out. for direci recording lo VCRs. 

• Se\eral Madniashes have internal di^^ 
video editing facilities as standard and 
many others can be upgraded to include 
this facihiv with ease. 



'^ 9, feature.-i like autoiubles and on-screen movies. 

' The Iniernet's standard format for video files, c^alled 
QuickTime, or QuickTime fnr Windows, are both 
Apple products. Of course QuickTime comes as 
standard with every Mac. 



Connectivity & Expandability: 



• All Macintoshes have networking built in -^ standard, 
so ctmii^cting systems together and adding shared 
primers ^. (X»iildn t be easier. 

• All Macinti^es have an external SCSI connector as 
standard - a%ng exiemai drives, cartridge drives, 
scanners etc |fally is Plug-and-Play. 

• Low-cost digii^. cameras can be plugged into 
the Mac for instant real image input. 

• Inexpensive mdusiry- standard PCI cards can 
be used in all de.sklop .\1:ic sy^lenis. 



Education & Edutainment: 



Many quality Macititosh titles are widely available. 
Doriing KindcTsley offer superii titles li)(e The Ultimate 
Htintin liody and History of the World whilst Microsoft 
publish Enc-jna, Cinemania and Dinosauts. 
Because Macintosh is the prefen'ed .system 
within many eduational tsciblishnieaLs, 
high quality software is assured 




■t;jjjj.ui.i.i.i.^i..u4i 



f'-TT^^: 



W 



SMvrr 




■ Top games like- The- Ultimate Doom, 
Mysl, Rebel .■Vssitult I!, Dark Forces, 
Descent, Afterlife, Lost Eden, Legend 
of Kyrantiia, Full Throttle and 
llie RiH have all been developed 
for Miicinlosh 




Output & Presentation: 



' Cjmnccling and u.sing colour printen; 

(from Epson, HI'. Apple and others) 

to .Macs is so easy and the results are 

truly outstanding. 
' Many .»ft\vare packages are available 

offering image manipulation and,. 

superb pholn (lualllj'^outptif. 




m 



m 



MOKITORS.. 

Apple IS' iVM.jfcisjTic B51 

if)*l7'17a5TCOMi,ltiSyiic f«S 

Apple 17- 171MVTC0Mit!iSj« i645 

App^iO-UalsS^I £1056 

LASER PRINTERS.. 

AK.eL4Sff.WBi«ICIK-M,K0di« £5M 

HPlaKJr«6Mf-A*.6(10il[. tW 



ORAPHICS TABtET,,, 

SICmASE„. 
D2Di;ai^tbm2JCi{)Eri«TaiH0 £293 

D?i«0st6SjwdCD!)iM aU 
>Mrxt< 24()0E CD t)f.« aU 



^ fcr/HC<70 
•VOJIlXOWidos 

: is^r 



Hflflie^;e:6Mt'~A4.6ttMp tut M^wet 2Moe CD t)^.« 

ABJsLiS«Wirtf12«0PS.M,KiaDii £)3» ( wli S grut loftwanmlKl 



INKJET F1ttmEilS_ 
Ap(*StJ*WrM 1500 A4 CdSout 
A|i(de SiyicWrftef 2500 M Colajt 
CjiwiBKASMAacotouf 
tpwft Sljlus 600 A4 Ctf Pv 
tmpn style! 30O A4 Coiout 
f&ipn Styl'js Photo 6 Colour 
Epwn S^!us J52& A2Cofour 

CAMERAS... 

AppleOu^wTakeiOO 
Kniil DC20 

SCANNER.. 

UMAX Asm 600S - HsmShop LE 



COMMS,. 
£11f GWalViSageTEttPnnUiistfbH £135 
£175 (33.1 rnc Glccul Transit s/warel 
OS2 

£269 ACCESSORtES... 
£387 Appe D«igr Speakers I! £SS 

£410 Miully hf^t ct £31 

£7M Ujui^ QsmepiO £26 

riighlSl^it Pro Joyitict £80 

Grays firstxd Jojlt^ £100 

£«S lmx<t £4S 

tU7 ApoiB Ofu ywr On-Jje £1B 

Mi^waice WarTK\iy 

£206 LOTS MORE PERIPHERAli-CAUl 




Ciinl'-*iV?Ci 
WPA'rffl»'5S4E-C3 

urtrtYsoFTwutt. 

htosnJE 

Afli'Dj44BCa 

JH«JD(Mil»r2C 



ri!S 



"T-Lfl]tC!ranrt 

UteuttiuwBedirJO 
Dtamr Huwa Li^ Oudl 

5i"nix luAm, Spnsh-B fttedi 

'■'.;■: Ck'^ £ 

:i-r.i:i ^hin^3 I 

LE34IIE WnVfiK.. 



m ■ 
01 : 



OS : 



'A'ixkly Jhjunce pricei are exclmiiv 
ufVATaiidarebaisdoni^vaf 
fixed COST Appie Commercial 
Credti t£asffori!usitiess men. 

PERSOMAl nSA^CE- 

/■■(iMiicv ts fliio titaCuHcfaf 

inJaiduais itsmng our 

shouvjoms atidpa}ii\(i a 

miiimum cfIO% deposa. 

Tf)eTf.iHvV a... 
'Deferred Payment PJan' 

• llf. LMsy ly Ijuy you: Mac flllh a 
GIf Persona! Fiiunce- Optinn 

• f\s]i lui details of Qiit tu hUil yoii 

• Example... Pjjf lOm Dcposil on .i 
balarre ov<!r iJ2(H and ihen pay 
ncthing for i months (suljiect lo 
s!atU5 and ilH arrangcmeni fee) 

• WrJien detiiJj ase at-aiiiblf on 



AT GH Wt MAKE EVEKHHING EASY... 

PHONE GtL. 
ORDERING BY POST OR FAX.. 

ntrrier wtRi jCiT ■ipg.jtirsr*™ i! ifl'^gfjij J-.'V^'eJ^: ■.♦■J 'iv-tje ;i rarsr 
iMraidtJairt)fii7dttH^jto8Ju*Aii«*-w#riwr(tJia'3!i> ?4M ■rji.F :h«:)i«{ 

L< ftwitt ftwri faree flfiamjl ivr &f BtTfli ViT - BMW Bk fa *Wi 

OEUvcm'. 

wi e% »o(<« )hfia«<« <w ^ nuBf npw <»>rtfy acWm dvou^YM 
fiHWMnUWTY- 

UliWCESUiaUOEV/Er 
j« » sftow *7 WTjmiF iB« my M/« «w [i(wi ift to- (f« bAv* ore 




■Why Haiwoods?- 



5H1STHANNIVE!iSARY 



We've been providing 

Commodore |m)tliiels 

siiiec 1982 ami l(Ki;iy 

SLipph^ ;i nrnjje of WK, 

Motorola Iwsetl systems 

ineliidiiis llliz/.nrd aiii! 

Cyberstorin aloiis; wiih 

lideo prodiieis am! 

other pcripher.ils... 



Wh/ not vijil our showrwm and ws s range of 
MKinlosh poitxn on demensiration-. 

AN EASY DRIVE FROM MOST AREAS, 
We're open Moji to Sal - g.OOam until 5,00pm 

HiASE CAU TO COKFiSM A'^iUif&UTt 3EFCH£ MAXJNG 
A iOiG JOUWitY TO V-H LIS. 



GonlcB H»^ tKxJ tuT.put-fs ft.li ftBiKEcd as i speciiiiii Conmodeitc Jabi ir 
1932 inditt^stil] supporting Aii^g tuers ledjy. ^ bcpn suppiyMig 
Mjrinia';h «.v>ter!^ !/i !^>.'5 ^k^i tt became ricartlHi Commfxkmri'.'as failiiig 

ti> I -If:' ■ : 'J 3d'..;n^j^^^ i[ had. ffi' n«i.[^ tu have pmJuas 

^■'■Ji!" I'lJj ixf 'J'Ji aijl^Jra£;^ wh'j %-<;jxr demanding,, 

• SyMtnii ivid; j ifAiui.- ' '"-=-. 

• Sysumi B-ith uuLljruknB pcrfonian(.¥ 

• iyaata wtih unwrpa.-.k-d cue of use 

• S)-^tan5 wdxut ifK pidbkiiu 2nd tiisi&mog^ ^uociital ^iAt 
DOSi^mdoft-j. which nil pcrHst ind tnwbfe uses wai now. 

Todiy vc imt gm-n b bccaw mk of ibe bi^ Apple Atffawiscd \iesdka in 
Eun^ Oui CHcnsi've prnduitl kntrftindgf ami ^riti qifpvT lyjjjift piryjttqtf 
ail oitM u OM ci liriM g^ d Ap\ie AadmixiSimktQcttmvii 
acoKiteJ .Apple Htgher ird funh? Eduo^on AlliirKe RocBm. 



Tin iKtrT^MTiuHtj [1- 1? 



ramj»IM,IKImo(^r»rf&o* »,«,,«« 0,.™(im,Ui™M,t,„,„„^B»,,m(,r™««rCl»*^ 



lALl PRICES tNClUDE WT S 17, 5- 



ni^iiij 



OFFiaAL ORDERS 



and Education DpfHilmci>(s along 



■FAST-FAX'... 
onlH7?3BJl(M0foraRu^._ 
RKimrtse lo youi Quolalion 



CORDON HARWOOD 
COMPUTERS 

DEPT.B!!^' MEW STREET 

ALFRETON • DERBYSHIRE 

DE55 7BP 

Tel: 01773 835781 

FAX: 01773 831040 




Dnient 



c 




AcnoN NEWS 52 

I'm sure there is some games news this 
month, exactly what I cannot sa/. 
Perhaps turning to page 52 might help 

Civilisation 54 

Hugh is a man in control of his own des- 
tiny, now whether he should be in con- 
trol of anyone else's is another question 

Live media interview 56 

Last month's we had news on a 
company bringing Mac games to the 
Amiga, now we probe the developers 

Shadow of the 3rd moon 60 

Bloody hell, that heading only just fits in. 
Why can't they give games proper names 
anymore, no matter how good it looks 

Big red adventure 62 

Part two of part one, crack this great 
adventure with Amiga Actions continuing 
solution type guide thing 



Duke 3d 



64 



Duke Nuke 'Em on the Amiga surely not! 
Well no, but being able to walk around any 
Duke level is a damn good start in my book 




GuNSHiP 2000 o5 

Now I'm sure there will be mention of 
Hugh's big chopper at some point, so 
there I got it out the way right at the start, 
ooh err misses, f nar f'nar, nudge nudge 

Six sense 66 

A brand new game! Can you believe it, those 
crazy East Europeans they must be on drugs 



IVIlNI OFFICE 



Has Guildhall over stretched itself by stepping 
into the world of serious software with this 
latest re-release of Eurosoft's Mini Office? 



Neil Mohr gets all arty which makes a 
change because he is normally he is just 
farty. This latest version get put through the 
mangier until all the nasty bits show up 




New YORK 




Just what the Amiga world needs right now, a 
brand new newsgroup reader, joy and rapture 



EATURES 



Browser war 



It's time to stand up and be counted, 
Amiga Computing takes the latest three 
versions of iBrowse, Voyager and AWeb to 
see which on comes out on top 



POSTSCRIPT- 




Have ever wanted to display or print off a 
Postscript document? Well now you can, 
and for next to nothing to boot 



After being around for three years and a 
year on-line, the standard Amiga software 
group provided virtually every possible 
form of software ordering under the sun 



WiNTEL WORLD. 



Dave Cusick is not generally known for 
being an aggressive type, but this month 
he's kicking arse with his siie tens 




OCTOBER 1997 




HE COVERDISK 



Magnum opus 2 

The ultimate add-on for 
Directory Opus 5 users. Every 
file type, icon and backdrop 
you would ever need is in 
this massive collection 



Includes: 




Action Cow - Have your own cow, mooooooo 
Big Red Adventure - Complete solution 
MountDOS - Mount PC hard drives 
MUlLoad - Preloads all your MUl libraries 



WaitCUl - GUI replacement for the wait command 
Superes - Top Super72 replacement 
VisualPrefs - Configure Workbench's looks 
Multiview - Multi-filetype viewer front end 





OVER 
STORY 

That's all folks! 

Time and tide wait for no 
man, and sadly Amiga 
Computing must pass on, 
to a better place. Enjoy the 
final issue as we walk off 
towards the light/pub... 



A final look back over letters from the last 
nine years of Amiga Computing, but not 
the one from that American nutter woman 




Top 10 tips for a better computing life, 
you won't find better anywhere else 



MIGA GUIDE 




Techno Sound 
Turbo 2 Pro is 
reviewed once 
again by Paul 
Overaa 





Random access to files is 
always good and Paul 
Overaa loves it too 




• *. Translating C to assem- 
^x . bier is easy, Paul Overaa 
av show you with ByteRun 
' 1 compression 



; Draw images with Intu- 
j. ition, it so easy and Paul 
,>j. is the man to explain 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 




t's kind of odd, here I am, 
two years to the day that I 
started working on Amiga 
Computing. From lowly 
cover disk editor to editor to ex-editor 
in under 18 months. It seems a little 
ironic that at a time where there is 
more optimism and possibilities for 
positive change in the Amiga world 
that Amiga Computing should close. 

As I write, the PowerPC boards are 
just beginning to ship. They have yet 
to prove themselves, but at least they 
should provide a stop gap until a true 
PowerPC machine can be developed. 

To me, the Amiga story is littered 
with missed opportunities and broken 
promises. Even today, with the Amiga 
owned by such a large and powerful 
company as Gateway 2000, no one 
can be completely sure as to what 
will happen next. 

The only way the Amiga is going to 
make it back as a mass-market 
machine is with a lot of commitment 
and financial backing. So far, for all 
the good intentions and comforting 
words we have yet to see any positive 
moves by Gateway 2000 in regard to 
Amiga international. 

I was saying only two months ago 
that we should be patient and not 
expect anything incredible in the near 
future, but where are the hardware 
and software engineers? I think 
Amiga International may find it diffi- 
cult to write a new operating system 
with just the tea lady. 

Once upon a time the Amiga 
industry was populated by visionaries, 
individuals with great ideas and 
incredible expertise. Over the last few 
years, due to a variety of factors such 
as declining software sales, the rise of 
the PC and most importantly the 
almost complete lack of continuity 
and strategy in Amiga hardware sales 
and development, these visionaries 
have for the most part left the scene. 
If this is the end of the road for the 
Amiga, it is a sad fate to befall such a 
once-magnificent machine," but it 



The AC team 










This is 

the end. 



I 



After over nine years in publication, 
Amiga Computing bows out 



seems hard to imagine the situation 
improving in the immediate future 
unless Gateway 2000 can pull some- 
thing truly exceptional out of its well- 
resourced hat. 

I would like to thank all our read- 
ers for their loyal support over the 
years. Even though Amiga Computing 
may not have been the best selling 
magazine, it has managed to cover a 
broad range of subjects and has 
brought you interviews with the tikes 
of Aardman Animations and the cre- 
ators of Babylon 5, not to mention in- 
depth reviews and features. 



I would like to thank everyone I 
have worked with on the magazine, 
I've had a lot of fun and learned a lot 
from you all. For the last few weeks 
there has been a steady flow of e- 
mail from people saying how much 
they will miss Amiga Computing, and 
it is good to know that, in some small 
way, we've been able to touch so 
many people's lives. iVly arse we have. 



/l/ejM^ 



Neil Mohr 

Editor 



EDITOR 

JARTEDITOH 
PRODUCTION EDITOR 
NEWS EDITOR 
REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS 

f ADVERTISING MANAGER 

AD SALES 

AD PRODUCTION 

ADTTPESETTERS 

MARKETING MANAGER 



Nell Hohr 
Graham Psrry 
Jurtine Bowden 
Hugh Poynton 
Dave Ciiiick 
PaulOveraa 
Elaine Prescott 
Sue Horsefield 
Barbara Newall 
Malcolm Thoriey 
Eddie Burke 
Steve Tagger 



PRODUCTION MANAGER Alan Caf per 
ADMIN MANAGER Joanne CMori 






CIRCULATION DIRECTOR David Wren 
MANAGING DIRECTOR Ian Bloomlield 

DISTRIBUTION COM AG (01 89S) 444035 
SUBSCRIPTION OISI-357 1%\ 
"^uVe a $bye ta menef, and then ]fdu die." 

Published liy IDG Meda, Media HtJuse.AdlinjtcMi Pirt, 
Macclesfrel<lSICI0 4NP 

TetOUIS 878688, FsjcOlSlS 87W64 

EMailcwiaco: 

Editorial: edit@acomp.daiiori.co.uk 

Advertislnj:jd5@)Comp.deiTBn.coiil 

h:tp://www.i(lg.to.utfimigacompi 



Amiga Computing 



We regret Am^ Compwinj cannot oSer 

techniol help on a persofial basis either by phone 

Of in writin|.All reader enquries shouW be 

submioed to the iddress la this panel. 

Amigi Coniputii^ is on ndefKnfent pulitaitPin (tml 

^ni^ TedinoloeiK s not resfwstfe fi)r n^ oflfie 

ortides in litis ssue w fbf ony of tde cfjnions expressed 

©1997 IDG Medt! . No material may be 
i^roduted in whole Of in part without written per- 
mission. While every care is taken, the publishers 
cannot be held legally reponsilsle for any errors in 
artidcs. listings or advertisements. 
All prices listed in die editorial content of this 
ma^ne ire inclusive of VAT unless stated 

12 lisve lul>icrif>Iiaii £49.!? (UK}, til.ti (EEC) 

lUM (Worfd) 
Osfsr'nj quirterfy direct debit £10.99 (UK cnlyj 

Printed by Spottiswoode. Colchester, Essex 




US Readers - Amiga Corrfnitinf (ISSN 0959- 
9i30| is published mondily by ItXj Media, En|- 
bnd, a subsidiary of the IDG Corp. Periodical 
postage paid pending at Boston. HA and addi- 
tional mailn; offices. Send enquiries to: 
IDG Macclesfiefd. 

US yearly subscription rate: USA GskS $70, 
USA Standard $40 

For nine years Amiga Computing has been 
the leading magazine for Amiga enthusi- 
asts. Amiga Computing promises to 
inform, educate and entertain its readers 
each month with the most dedicated 
coverage of the Amiga available jm 



OCTOBER 1997 



Amiga Mice 



Replacement Mice i-i.y^ 

MegaMouse 400 i9.9=5 

MegaMouse Plus (3 Button.) il0.9S 

Optical Mice i29.95 

New Golden Image 

TrackBall £19-95 

Pen Mouse .«2.95 

(ideal for CAD) 

New Black Mouse 

for Amigas i9.95 



Ram Boards 




EAMCAKDSA1200 

A1200 witli dock and 4.\lii initl upgr.iii«blei...i-i9.0i> 

A1200 ivUli clack and 8Mb i.6jm 

A1200 with clack, 8Mb & 33Mhz FPU iSO.OO 

33Mhz KPU inc. cr>'Slal .£35.00 



Controllers 



Catweasel for A1200 - allow.s yoii lo 

connea High Densit)' Disk Drives X55.00 

Catwea.se! for A150O/20OO/40O0 £55.0*1 

Buddha IDE Controller for A! 500/2000/4000 .i5 5.00 
Catweasel plus Buddha for A 1500/2000/4000 .i79,0l) 

Oktagon 2008 SCSI controller .£-99.00 

Multiface lit £-79.00 

PCMCIA Controller for CDRom for A1200..i69.00 



New Gl-Quatro Buffered 
Interface for A1 200 



(Successfully launched at World "of Amiga Show 97) 

Buffered Interface for A 1200 with 

IDEfi.x'97 sofm'are allows to connea 

4 ATAPI device.'! to A1200 i59.95 



New AlfaQuatro Interface^ 



Specially made hardware and software. 

Allow.s -i ATAPI devices, ie. 2 IDE hard 

disk & 2 IDE CD Rom to Amiga 4000 

internal IDE controller, through Alfapower 

on Amiga 500, 500+. comes with full 

IDE Fix software i59.O0 



Joysticks & Joypads 



Amiga Joy.siicks .4,9.95 

Amiga loypads X9-95 

CD 32 Joypad il4.00 



Multi -Media Speakers: 

100 watt (pmpo) IW.OO 

240 wan (pmpo) i45.00 




Best pricing on CD ROM Drives & Hard Drives 

We CBH supply L-t-i nuiyi -StJiuilLiiis ;uf hll mhIi'jus hwh r^^vt' lO , 

We Will match a nv genuine advertised price and also give four top titles freef 

r;- ''. '■ ■" ' ^ie; PinbalLFant 

p. 'cii any produi 

All our External IDS CD ROM Drives have bui t in power supplies (ttiey do not draw power Irorn your Amiga) 
Three dHerenl options !o connect CD ROM drives to A600 or A1200 

a) Use PCMCIA port for total external solution without opening up 

your Amiga. You can Hot plug this device without harming your Amiga. 

b) Use Inlernal IDE porl with AllaDuo if you have 2.5" Hard Drive j^^ 
(will be with lull IDEFIX soltware). 

c) Use Inlernal IDE por; with Gl-Qualro buffered Interlace if you 
have 3.5" Hard Drive (will be with full IDEFIX software). 

All CD ROM drives have play CD (acility. 




Quad speed CD ROM for 
Six speed CD ROM for 
Eight speed CD ROM for 
12 speed CD ROM for 
1 5 speed CD ROM for 



External 


Internal 


External" 


Inlernal 


A60O/A12OO 


A1500,'A2000 


A500yA500-i- 


A4000 


£149.00 


£119.00 


£129.00 


£109.00 


£159.00 


£129.00 


£139.00 


£119.00 


£159,00 


£139.00 


£149.00 


£129.00 


£179.00 


£149.00 


N/A 


£139,00 


£169.00 


£159.00 


N/A 


£149,00 



"(tor A500'A500+ Allnpoivor liard driuo conlrollsf and Hard Drive is required). A1500,'A2000 supplied with 
IDE contrallur & soflwate.A'lOOO supplied wilh AlfaQuatro Interiaco & Full IDEFIX sotlwaro. 



Floppy Drives 




Miscellaneous Products 



E-Xternal Floppy Drive 

for all Amigas i39.95 

Internal Floppy Drive 

A5()0/5(X)+ .428.00 

Internal Eloppy Drive A600/1200+ X28,00 

Inlernal Elappy Drive AI5OO/200O £28.00 



(DE Hard Drives 



HARD DKI\'Ei + BUDDHA CONTIiCULEI! 

FOR A15O0/A3OO0/A4OOO Piease Ring 



IDE 2.5' Hard Drives 



IDE 2.5" Hard <.lri\'es come formatted and installed 
with Workbench. Cable, screw.s, software and 
instructions supplied, (please rinafor availabiHty) 

KOMb i69.00 3-!0Ml) 1109.00 

12lMb i79.00 420Mb ^119.00 

170Mb i79.00 S'iOMb il29.00 

250Mb i«9.00 



IDE 3.5" Hard Drives 



44pin 3 connector cable £5.00 

44pin 2 connector cable £3.00 

40pin 3 connector cabie 90cm i5-00 

AlfaDuo 44pin to 40 pin Interface & IDE cables £20-00 
AlfaQuatro 3x40pin interface & IDF cables .£39.95 
DD floppy di.sks (50) 

(inn-ludiny niulticoioupjcl difik |ai>cls) iO.UU 

DD floppy disks (100) 

(inckding multicoloun:d di-sk labels) £25-00 

3-5" Hard Drive Kit for A600/i200 

* in-^all Miflwjn; ,.£15.00 

Di.skbo.x to hold 10 discs £1.00 

Animal Jungle design and Dinosaur design .£2.00 

Optical Mouse Mat £5.00 

2 in 1 Scanner/Mouse Pad 

C^n be used 3sa memn pad -.. £3.0tl 

Amiga Power Supply 4.5 amp £15.00 

Plain Wristrest £2.00 

CD Cleaners - half price 

CD Rom Cleaner £3.00 

Automatic CD Rom Cleaner (tjancr)- powrrMii...,t.6,00 
Laser Lens Cleaner £4.50 



Accelerator Boards 



IDE 3.5" Hard dri^'es conie formatted and installed 
with Workbencli. Cable, screws, software and 
instmctions supplied, (please ring for availabUUy) 

l.OGig .£.130.00 3.2Gig £200.00 

*1.2Gig.., ..£135.00* 3,8Glg £235.00 

1.7Gig £155.00 5 Gig Maxtor.. £329-95 

Z.IGig tI75.0€ Amiga h'vrmat Gold 

2.5Gig ..£179.00 Award August 'P7" 



1230 33Mhz + 4Mb ±135.00 

1230 33.Mhz + 8Mb £145.00 

1230 33.Mhz + 16Mb £175,00 

Viper MKIV 'IZMhj; 4Mb (noi upgradciblo) iSO,00 



Viper MKV 



ITiHiiffft 



4MbSimms £20,00 

8Mb Simms t30.00 



16Mb Simms £60.00 

32Mb Simm.s,..£140,00 



1230 sOMh?. + H.\Ib £159.00 

1230 50Mhz + 8.\Ib £169.00 

1230 50Mhz + 16Mb £199,00 



Accelerator for A600 



Viper A630 40Mh2 4Mb (not upgndc-jlik'i £110.00 

Viper A630 40Mhz 8Mb (n.>L upBndi.-aN.-i £120.00 



.Ml prices include VAT. PIcsise add £3.50 P&P for items under £30.00, £5.00 for items over £30.00, 
£8.00 P&P lor Scanners, Speakers & Hard Drives, £10.00 courier for next day. Tax Free Export Orders Welcome. 

Golden Jmuge .icccpls Atuns. Visa, Cheques & Posuil Orders. E&OE. Prices .sutijecl to change wiihoul nolicc. Goods subject lo evjilabililj. Spedfications .subject lo chansc wiihout notice 

Golden Image (UK) Ltd 

r£ Unit f.5. Hiillmark Tradinj- K.sliite. Fourth VVav, Wemblev, Middx H.\9 01, It 

Sales Hotline No: 0181 900 9291 Fax:oi8i 9oo<;28i 

http://Avwvv.reserve.co.uk/gold Talkniji Pages: 0800 601)900 

Ourstanditrtl ttrnis :ind CQiKlilinrr; appiy - iivailahlt- un rt-tjiHst. \St' do not sup[il> im :i triyl Itasis 






r ■ v_T yj^\^ 



^rnm 



Amiga network 



SOLUTION 





work. 



olden Image UK Ltd has announced the release 

of Connexion, a new Ethernet adapter that 

allows any Amiga 1 500, 200O, 3000 or 4000 to 

be connected up to a standard Ethernet net- 



ConneXion offers a fast 10 [\^bit Ethernet link and 
autoboots via Netzu'erk, the in-built boot Rom, avoiding 
the need to install additional drivers. The card employs 
a 32K - 16 bit on board cache so as to boost perfor- 
mance and avoid any loss of processing speed, as often 
happens over Ethernet connections. 

The Connexion adapter retails at £175.00 and is 
available directly from Golden Image. For more details 
phone: - 0181 900 9291 



QQaKE CD 2.4 RELEASE 



German Software developers Angela Schmidt and 
Patrick Ohly fiave announced the release of their latest 
software package. Make CD 2.4 is the first CD writer soft- 
ware with CD-RW support and the software can now 
completely erase and rewrite CD-RW media. CDs can be 
erased up to 1000 times without any deterioration in 
quality. 

Make CD 2.4 offers a host of extra features to v2.3 
including improved drivers and bug fixes. The latest ver- 



sion of the software also offers Swedish, Norwegian, 
Hungarian and Italian user interface. The English manu- 
al has apparently been Improved but is not yet com- 
pletely finished. A slightly limited but freely distributable 
version of Make CD is available on the Internet on the 
MakeCD home page at http;//makecd.core.de/ 

Make CD is available at HiSoft and its dealers, and 
directly from the authors. For direct orders contact: 
Angela.Schmidt@stud.uni-karlsruhe.de 




e 



I 



YGNUSED SOON 
BE RE-LEASED 



TO 



Schatztruhe, the German based Amiga software company, 
is to re-release the popular Amiga text editor, CygnusED. 
Schatztruhe has collaborated with the test editor's original 
author's, Bruce Dawson and Olaf Barthel to update the pro- 
gram and fix long standing bugs. Schatietruhe and 



CygnusED's authors have decided to poll Amiga owners on 
the development of the project- The test editor should be 
released by the end of this year. 

If you're interested in influencing the development of the 
editor send your suggestions to: schatitruhe@cww.de 



ulcan takes 
America 

Vulcan Software, the Amiga games publisher, 
has expanded its operations to include the US 
and Canada and officially launched its 
American branch. 

Vulcan Software America will offer maii 
order, services and technical support specifi- 
cally for its American customers. It will also 
assume the role as main distributor of Vulcan 
products to dealers in America and Canada. 
Dealers who want to stock Vulcan products 
should now contact Vulcan Software America 
for more information. 



I 



OMPUTER City to 
distribute in Belelux 



Amiga International Inc. and the Rotterdam based computer retailers. Computer City have agreed on a deal which will enable the Dutch firm to market the Amiga in the 
Benelux countries. The deal, which was formalised on 15 July will allow Computer City to sell new Amigas and peripherals and software support for existing models. 

"This activity will help us to reinvigorate the Amiga market place in the Benelux. Our basic of success is to work together with partners 
to build up the former market places and to find new ones and to be ready for new product distribution", said 
Petro Tyschtschenko, managing director of Amiga International, Inc. 

Computer City was founded in 1988 and has since then been dedicated to catering for the Amiga market in 
the Benelux counties. According to the company, it believes that there has been, and still is, a substantial market 
for the machine in Benelux and the rest of the world. 
For more information contact: 
Ron van Herk 
Computer City 
Fax: -1-31-10-4517748 
E-mail: info@compcity.nl 
Web; http://www.compcity.nl/ 



Amiga Computing 




OCTOBER 1997 



EB HACKER STALLS THE INTERNET 



Hacker, Eugene Kashpureff, plunged the Internet into chaos last month with 
the most spectacular hack since the 1988 Internet Worm paralysed the Net. 

Kashpureff claims to have exploited a loophole in the Domain Name 
Service software normally used to look up addresses of Internet sites which 
allowed him to add his servers to the official list of Internet domains and 
'top-level' servers. 

The hacker's actions were apparently a protest against InterNlCs monop- 
oly on top-level domain names and prevented internet users all over the 
world from connecting to their desired sites. 

Cerbemet was one of the few ISPs to escape the chaos. According to 



Cerbernet's Technical Director, Justine Kerry "The Internet still depends on a 
level of trust and community. The InterNlCs monopoly on domain naming 
runs contrary to this spirit, and yet depends on co-operation by all ISPs in 
that we must all choose to use the official root name servers. Most ISPs 
don't even realise they ore effectively bolstering the InterNIC monopoly. 
Sadly the whole Internet has suffered the consequences of unilateral action 
taken by AlterNIC to smash this monopoly by overriding our name server 
choices". 



For more information take a look at http://www.alternic.net/protest.html 



I 



ateway 2000 fights 
Amiga licence claim 




Gateway 2000 , the Fortune 500 company that now owns the rights to Amiga International, disputed Rightiming 
Electronics' bid to sell and develop the Amiga in the far East this month. 

On 23 Juiy Lotus Pacific, a public company listed on NASDAQ Bulletin Board, announced it had signed a co-opera- 
tion agreement with China's largest TV producers, the Sichuan Changhong Electronics Group Corporation of China, to 
produce 200, 000 units of the Wonder TV A6000. 

Rightiming Electronics, a direct subsidiary of Lotus Pacific, purports to hold a licence to use Amiga patents, trade- 
marks and copyrights in China, Taiwan and the parts of the former Soviet Union. The deal with Sichuan Changhong 
includes supplying the company with product specific chip sets and other key components. 

Gateway 2000 responded the next day by issuing a press release to the effect that it disputed any claims by 
Rightiming Electronics about owning a licence to produce Amiga technology. 

"LVe dispute its license, its right to sell any license and we dispute any claims it has made with respect to Amiga 
patents, copyrights, or trademarks. Gateway 2000 owns all Amiga patents, copyrights and trademarks world-wide and 
will continue to license Amiga technology to qualiFied companies", said Gateway's press release. 




GATEWiT^XX) 



EW IVIEDIASOFT TITLES 



Jfkl^kt^^kt Qmiga Apache 

^" W^ •B W W ^HHHr W n jhe new version of the Amiea Aoache Web 



Got an Amiga? 



MediaSoft, the UK publisher of Amiga Review, has 
announced that it is to split the magazine into two individ- 
ual parts to fully cover the various aspects of the Amiga. 
Amiga Review will be focused largely on hardware and 'seri- 
ous' applications, with Amiga Gamer being geared towards 
the Amiga games market. 

Amiga Review will be halved to £1.60, while Gamer will 
be sold for £ I. SO. People who took out a subscription to Amiga Review will receive both magazines for no extra charge. 
Both magazines will be only available through mail order. 

The split has come about because of the resurgence of interest in the Amiga computer platform and the increased 
number of games that are being developed and produced. Readers can send orders by sending cheques or postal 
orders to MediaSoft Magazines, Communications House, Isle of Wight, P037 7LU. 

For more information take a look at Amiga Review's Web site at: 
http://mww.med iasftdemon.co.uk/ARMagazine/arindex.html 



HCPUG 
SUMMER OFFER 

The 
Independent 
Computer 
Products User 
Group has 
announced 
that it is to cut 
its six month 
subscription 
rate to £13 (including one share) for UK mem- 
bers and £15.50 for Eire and Europe. Overseas 
airmail rate for the offer will be £18. 

ICPUG was formed back in 1978 to provide 
help and advise for owners of Amigas, PCs 
and other home computers. ICPUC is regard- 
ed as being about the only remaining source 
of information for 8 bit computers. 

The membership offer includes all the 
ICPUG journals for 1997, a free PD software 
library for the Amiga and ail other 
Commodore machines and a PD library for 
the PC (Windows and DOS). 

For more details phone John Bickerstaff on 
0181 651 5436, or take a look at the ICPUC 
Web site at: www.icpug.org.uk 



The new version of the Amiga Apache Web 
seroer software has been released. Amiga 
Apache 1.2.1 httpdaemon is downloadable 
from the Apache Web site 
http://vuvvw.dsdelft.nl/-apache . It's fully 
compatible with the original Apache Web 
sen/er which can be found at: 
http://www.apache.org. 

The Amiga Apache project is completely 
staffed by volunteers and Amiga enthusiasts 
under the leadership of Bert Vortman. 



i 



HROMA ANNOUNC 

DIY A1200 TOW 




chroma, the specialist Amiga hardware supplier, has announced 
the launch of the A1200 DIY tower case. The Chroma DIY tower is, 
so Chroma boast, the cheapest tower case available in the UK. 

It will take an A1200 motherboard complete with internal PSU 
or 'powerbrick' for motherboard power. The PCMCIA slot is still 
accessible for use with a Squirrel or similar device. The tower mill 
also allow the user to install a complete PC system or Zorro slot 
array. 



ES New 

ER CASE 



The Chroma tower has 10 drive bays and comes complete with 
230 watt PSU, UK mains plug, screws/spacers/cable tie5/2-part 
stand/guide. To complete a tower system, a keyboard-fadapter 
and floppy drives-i-adapter are required along with any IDE or SCSI 
peripherals/interfaces. 

The tower is available, either fully converted (£105.99), or in its 
cheaper DIY format (£79.99). For more information contact 
Chroma at: chromanet@aol.com or on: 01328 862693 




OCTOBER 1997 



Extracting 
Cover Disk 

FILES 



Before putting the cover disks anywltere 
near your computer, write protect tjiem 
by moving the blade tab in tlie top cor- 
ner of tlie disk, so you can see through 
the hole. Doing this makes sure you can- 
not damage your disks in any way. There 
is also no reason why the cover disks 
need to be written to, so even if the 
computer asks you to write enable the 
disks, don't do it 

To extract any single archive, simply 
double click its icon, and follow the on 
screen instructions. If you want to 
extract the program to Ram, select the 
NOVICE level on the welcome screen, 
and press proceed once on the current 
screen, and then again on the next The 
program can then be found in your Ram 
disk. Normally most programs need fur- 
ther installing, so read the documents 
on how to do this. 

Hard Drive 
Users 

Hard drive users do not have to boot 
with the first disk, but you must make 
sure you have the Amiga's Installer pro- 
gram in your C drawer. To make sure 
your hard drive has the correct files in 
place double dick on the SetupHD icon. 
This will check if you have the Installer 
program and K not will copy it across. Do 
not woriy as it will not write over any 
existing files. 

All you hard drive owners will find 
MultiExtract very useful. It is a separate 
method of extracting the cover disk files. 
It allows you to extract a number of files 
in one go, to your hard disk or Ram. 

When you tun MultiExtract you will be 
presented with a number of check boxes, 
each representing one of the programs 
on that cover disk. Just de-select all the 
programs you do not want extracting, 
and then press proceed. All Uie selected 
programs can now miraculously be 
found in tiie selected destination. 



Faulty disks 



If you should find your Amiga 
Computing CoverDisk damaged 
or faulty, please retum it to: 

TIB Pic TIB House, 11 Edward 
Street Bradford, W. Yoria 

7-m 7BH. 

Please allow 28 days for delivery 




I 



Another great selection of Amiga 
utilities to nnake life easier 



Magnum Opus 2 



Author Richard Lane Requires Directory Opus v5.5 



Why can't life be more simple? Why 
can't there be just one picture for- 
mat, one sound file type and one 
document style? But no, every man 
and his dog fias come up with their 
own stupid format, and where 
does this leave you the user? I'll tell 
you where - confused and 
bemused. 

Help is at hand however, for Opus 5 
users at least, in the form of Magnum 
Opus version 2. This add-on for Opus 5 
will save you hours of frustration trying 
to set up and configure Opus 5 to use all 
those different file types. To back up the 
predefined file types there are a whole 
host of icons for use in Directory Opus 
and there are configuration files prewrit- 
ten to take advantage of both the new 
filetypes and new icons. 

You have two routes to installing Mag- 
nus Opus. You can either use the sup- 
plied installer that uses the normal 
Amiga installer, all very lovely or, for 
more experienced users, you can try 



T r r 

p ^ ^ 


i^P^ 


%M ^•^: a^a! iJMHm 



Weil Magnum Opus may not win any 

artistfc awards, but as It save you hours 

of work you can't complain 

doing the installation by hand. If you 
already have an earlier version of Magnus 
Opus installed this will of course replace 
many of those files so don't worry. 

To start you should rename the original 
filetype directory in the Opus drawer to file- 
types_origtnal and then copy the new file- 
type drawer from the Magnum Opus 
directory. Next copy over the new images 
drawer and also the contents of the other 
drawers to there respective Opus directo- 
ries. When you restart Directory Opus it will 
take a little longer than normal but this is 
perfectly normal. 



Big Red Adventure Solution 



Author: John Bamsiey 

Requires Big Red Adventure 
Well, we started so we'll finish. If you have been looking 
forward to completing the Big Red Adventure with the 
help of our solution and are panicking now it has 
stopped, with this being the last issue and all, don't worry 
yourselves. Here is the complete solution for this rather 
nifty point and click adventure. As you will see the whole 
thing is rather long as so even with the solution will take 
you ages to finish, enjoy. 




If anyone says I look like I 
they get punched, alright? 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



Action Cow 



AuthoRBen and Jeny* Requires Scissors and Printer 



There is a story behind this. When it was announced that Gateway had bought Amiga Technologies I was 
searching around the Internet for a nice picture of a cow, but the Internet being what it is I couldn't find 
sack all. I then came across Ben and Jerry's action cow and a bit of joy entered my life. Just load the gif 
into your favourHe paint package and print it off. With the supervision of a suitable adult, cut out the 
cow, sniff some glue, tape the beast together and lo and behold, you will have your very own Cate- 
way/Amiga/Ben and Jerry Action cow type thing, groovy. 







WSpeed 



AuthorJANISoft 

Requires Wortcbench 2.04 



II you got last month's great issue, and it was 
great, you may have read little Dan Winfield's 
(and he is little) comparison of tlie Picasso IV and 
CyberVision 3D boards. 

In the review Mr Winfield used a program 
called WSpeed to do some straight forward speed 
comparisons, and for your pleasure here is the 
very same program so you can tiy it out and see 
how much slower your AGA and ECS systems are 
in comparison. 



WSpeed - 



a& recommended 
by Mr Winfield 




WaitGUI 



Authon Diri( Hee ! 

Requires Workbench Z04 i 

If you ever need to delay people on a com- 
puter it is a good idea to let them know why 
they are sitting around doing nothing, and 
how long they are going to be exercising 
their posterior. This tiny program replaces 
the original Amiga Wait command with one 
that pops up a small windows that has a 
progress bar along with a count down. It is 
all very easy to use and looks a lot better. 




Mount DOS 



Author: vmrmmm 

Requires Workbench 2.04 

This tiny little program that adds a handy 
function to Workbench and your Amiga 
operating system. What is this amazing func- 
tion I hear you cry. It simply recognises and 
mounts PC hard drives connected to your 
Amiga, These drives can either be IDE or 
SCSI drives, and it may actually recognise 
any type of media including Jazz and Zip dri- 
ves, but I cannot guarantee that as I have 
never tried it. 

Before you can use MountDOS you need 
to change a few of its tool types so click on 
its icon and select the icon information. You 
will need to change the device and unit 
numbers so MountDOS knows what drive it 
should be looking for. You will also need to 
take the mount command out of the brack- 
ets so it will actually mount the drive. 



Visual Prefs 



Author: Massimo T^ntlgnone 

Requires Workbench 3.0 

One thing that has been made accountable for 
putting people off the Amiga is the interface. With the 
flash and shiny interface of System 8 and Windows 
95, the old Amiga Workbench is looking rather 
shabby and dull. But this does not have to be case, 
over the last year or so, programs like Sysihack and 
MCP have shown that there is no reason why the 
interface cannot be updated quite simply, and so 
look a lot better. 

Visual Prefs takes the whole thing to the extreme 
allowing you to alter almost every part of Workbench. 
The result is a much better looking interface, as you 
can see from the grab. The program is also simplicity 
to use. A preference program lets you configure the 
interface and to actually get these changes in place 
put the line run >nil: visualprefs in your startup 
sequence just before the iPrefs command is run. 




Now daaent that look much better than before? 



MUl ENXTENSIONS 



Author Cilles Masson/Klaus Melchior • Magic User Interface 



One thing that makes MUl so 
good is it modular design that 
allows separate parts to be added 
or just updated at a later date. On 
the disk are two new part for MUl 
one is an update to the busy sin- 
gle that many programs use, 
: while the other is a replacement 
. for the list view that is much 



more advanced than the original 

one. 

Just used the supplied install 
scripts and everything will be 
copied across as for you, you 
should also restart you machine 
before trying them, to make sure 
that the libraries are not resident 
in memory. 




Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



©uildhall is best know for its 
extensive range of re-released 
Amiga games. Witli mini Office, 
however, it maizes its first foray 
into thie serious side of Amiga software. As 
witti its games efforts. Guild fiall lias gone for 
another re-release of an old Amiga package 
- in this case mini Office, originally released 
by Europress Software some five years ago. 

I have to admit than when I first got hold 
of the box I was not too hopeful. Guildhall 
can get away with releasing old Amiga 
games as for the last few years there has 
been very little progression or development 
in that area {take Fl 5-11 that is nine years old 
but it stiil plays well). When it comes to utili- 
ties, however, it's whole different ball game. 

The "serious" software side of the Amiga 
has been far from stagnant the last few years. 
Haarge and Partner came to the forefront of 
development and long running Amiga pro- 
grams such as Wordworth, RnalWriter, Tur- 
bocalc - to name but a few - continue to be 
developed. 

Mini Office comes on four disks; one con- 
tains the front-end and file manager program 
while the other three have the database, 
spreadsheet, wofdprocessor, spell checker 
and graphic programs. As the programs are 
written in AMOS and were made five years 
ago, they are designed for 1 Mb floppy based 
Amigas and, as a result, there is no HD 
installer. The programs can be run from the 
hard drive, you just have to copy the contents 
of the fiies into a directory and assign each 
disk name to this directory. 

The wordprocessor is somewhat of an 
early '80s throwback. Even the basic ED pro- 
gram could give it a run for its money. We are 
talking minimalist programming here - you 
can t/pe text, make it bold, italic or underline 
it, add left, right ar^d centre justification, 
adjust tab positions and that really is about it, 
apart from the spell checker. 

Onto the spreadsheet. Again, this a basic 
program with the minimum of editing tools 
available. You can cut and paste individual or 
blocks of cells and, while using formulae, you 
can still select cells and a range of cells, mak- 
ing creating formulae easy. Tfie number of 



Guildhall dusts off another ancient 
Anniga program, but perhaps this one 
I should have stayed in the crypt 




formulae covered is fairly extensive, including 
logarithmic and logical expressions. 

Tfie database module is a minimalist flat 
database. You can set up a template form 
and a few records, search those records and 
print them off. If you need to catalogue any- 
thing, such as your CD collection, you have 
far to much time on your hands, but it is pos- 
sible with this database. 

This leaves the graphics module; not so 
much a paint package of any description, but 
really an extension to the spreadsheet and 
database modules. Quite simply this will let 
you import a group of statistics or enter them 
manually and produce a chart of your choice. 
Again, there are no real surprises here: Bar, 
pie and line charts are available along with 
stacked, area and 3-D versions. Up to four 
separate data sets can be used in the same 
graph at any one time. 

At the end of the day, for 20 quid, you are 
getting a five year old AMOS program so you 
can't expect too much. The weakest part is 
the wordprocessor module which is very 
poor, the spreadsheet and database mod- 
ules are passable and the disk manager and 
graphic programs are helpful additions. 

The real decision you have to make is 
whether you would be better off spending 
another 25 pounds and getting the Word- 
worth Office CD, but then if you only have an 
A500 then this is as good as it gets. 






^ 



h 




BQittsnii 
-JIfje 



Requirements 

RED essential BLACK recommended 



1 Mb 



RAM 



Product 


DETAILS 


Pntduct 




Mini Office 


SanallM 




Guildhall 


Pl1<» 




E19.95 


E-MaU 


0891 227 355 
Gui!dhall@glsukok.demon.co.uk 



Scores 


Ease of use 


90% 


Implementation 


50% 


Value For Money 


75% 


Overall 


65% 



Amica Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



1 MILLION POUND 
STOCK CLEARANCE! 



MAINBOARDS SOUND CARDS 



Exc Vat Inc Vm 

INTEL CHIPSET VX75 1 2 £52.00 £61.10 16 BIT 

INTEL CHIPSET HX/5 1 2 £fi0.00 £70.?0 32 WAVE 

INTEL CHIPSET TX/S 12 £h9.m £SI.OH SOUND BLASTER 16 



Exc Vm Inc Vat 

£13.00 £15.2S 

£39.00 £45.83 

£39.00 £45.83 



FAX/MODEMS GRAPHICS CARDS 



DI.^MOND 33.6 VOICE t4().00 £47.00 

EXTERNAL 33.6 £60.00 £70.50 

US/ROBOTICS 33.6 £75.00 £88.13 

U.S/ROBOTICS 33.6 ext £120.00 £141.00 



1 MB DIAMOND 

2 MB DIAMOND 

1 MB GENERIC 

2 MB GENERIC 



£19.00 £22.33 

£27.00 £31.73 

£13.00 £L'5.2a 

£23.00 £27.03 



MONITORS HARD DRIVES EIDE 



DAEWOO 14" £99.00 £116.33 

DAEWOO 15" £159.00 £186.83 

DAEWOO 17" £280.00 £329.00 

ALL DAEWOO MONITORS 

CARRY A 3-YEAR ON-SITE 

WARRANTY 



2 GIG 

1 GIG 

5 GIG 

2 GIG 
8 GIG 
1 GIG 



£105.00 
£117.00 
£145.00 
£165.00 
£180.00 
£245.00 



£123.38 
£137.48 
£170.38 
£193.88 
£211.50 
£287.88 



MEMORY 



4 MB SIMMS 
8 MB SIMMS 
16MB SIMMS 
32 .MB SIMMS 
I MB 30 PIN 
4 MB 30 PIN 
I6MBDIMMS 
32 MB DIMMS 
64 MB DIMMS 



£10.00 
£2 1 .00 
£45.00 
£99.00 
£5.00 
£ 1 7.50 
£45.00 
£99.00 
£199.00 



£11.75 

£24.68 

£52.88 

£116.33 

£5.88 

£20.56 

£52.88 

£116.33 

£233.53 



PROCESSORS 



INTEL PI 33 
INTEL PI 66 
INTEL P200 
MMX PI 66 
MMX P2(!0+ 
CYRIX PI 66-H 
CYRIX P200+ 



£82.00 
£125.00 
£189.00 
£179.00 
£299.00 

£55,00 
. £75.00 



£96.35 
£146.88 
£222.08 
£210.33 
£351.33 
£64.63 
£88.13 



CASES 



CD ROM DRIVES 



MINI TOWER 200 W/PSU £18.00 £21.15 

MIDI TOWER 200W/PSU £25.00 £29.38 

FULL TOWER 200W/PSU £48.00 £56.40 

ALL CASES ARE CE APPROVED 



6 SPEED 
8 SPEED 
16 SPEED 
AUDIO CABLES 



£32.00 £37.60 

£32.00 £37.60 

£52.00 £61.10 

0.55p 0.65p 



MISC 



KEYBOARDS & MICE 



105 KEYBOARD 



FLOPPY DRIVES 



£11.00 £12.93 MOUSE 



£6.00 
£2.25 



£7.05 
£2.64 



WE HAVE A PRICE 

PLEDGE POLICY - 

WE WILL NEVER 

KNOWINGLY BE 

UNDERSOLD. 



O ^ 



; VO SO 



QO QO 



C^ ^ 



2 H fe 



DELIVERY CHARGES 

SMALL CONSLIMABLES AND SOFTWARE 
ITKMS UNDtiR THE VALUE OH £.i9 PLEASE 

ADD t.l..i(» P&V. OTHER ITEMS EXCEPT 

LASERS. NE.XT DAY COURIER SERVICE tlO 

PER BOX. OFFSHORE AND HIGHLANDS, 

please: CALL FOR A QUOTATION. IN 

ADDITION W'L OFFER THE FOLLOWING 

EXPRESS SERVICES: S.'^TL^RDAY DELIVERY 

NORMAL RATE F'LUS H^ PER BOX. 

MORNING. NEXT D.-\Y NORMAL RATE PLUS 

tin PER BOX. E&OE PRICES ARE SUBJECT 

TO CI lANtli; WITHOLIT PRIOR NOTICE, 

ALL TRADEMARKS ACKNOWLEDGED. 

TRADERS TERMS & CONDITIONS 

AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST 

2% CREDIT CARO SURCHARGE APPLIES 

TR.ll)E AND liDUC.-\TK)NAL ENQUIRIES 
WELCOME 

PERSON.AL CALLERS WELCOME 





f/y/a^ 




Omiga Web development seemed 
to jump out of nowhere. ] 
remember, just over two years 
ago, being thrilled that AIMosaic 
could display both text and images and in 
version two, forms were supported. Looking 
back, Amiga browsers have come on as 
much as the HTML they display. 

At that time Web sites where boring, the 
first version of HTML was stil! the only ver- 
sion widely used, and this lead to simply 
designed single column pages interspersed 
with graphics. So what happened? Well, 
Netscape 2 appeared and introduced new 
table tags and frames, along with progres- 
sive decoding, transparent GIFs and a bunch 
of new tags for site designers. 

Bang, suddenly every magazine was talk- 
ing about the on-line experience - cyber 
this, cyber that and cyber the olher, and we 
are still going strong. Can you blame us, 
before the advent of fast modems and low 
cost ISPs we were stuck with using BBSs. I'm 
not knocking BBSs, I have used them in the 
past and they offered a good, if limited, ser- 
vice. The Internet provides everything the 
BBS can, but a million times more and on a 
world-wide scale. 

Suddenly the Web became the glitz and 



« « 4h 




Just tor comperlsoHf hore is tntornot 
Explorer 3 on ttio Mac. Every part of this 
page is correct, avert down to the text 
area iieing correctly shown as a smgte 
text linOf and not the three or four that all 
the Amiga programs display 



New versions of AWeb, iBrowse 
and Voyager. I'd say that calls for a 
head to head feature 



bright lights and everyone was interested in 
it. AMosaic was dumped and from those 
ashes rose iBrowse - a very competent Web 
browser with table support, internal image 
decoding and complete forms support. And 
the Amiga Computing team looked upon 
iBrowse and savv' that it was good and made 
their own table based Web site, and when 
Ben learned Photoshop properly we got the 
white buttons and not the dodgy orange 
ones. 

So here we are today, table, frames, inter- 
nal image decoding and Javascript and Java 
are just around the corner and I thought it 
was about time to see how the three 
remaining Amiga Web browsers shape up. 

Testing Web browsers is not the most 
straight forward task. Looking at features al! 
three have prett/ much the same features. 
Things like bookmarks, cache browsers, 
definable buttons, quick links, grey scale 
output, printing, URL history are found in all 
three. 

AWeb is the obvious program when it 
comes to missing features, such as no inter- 
nal mail or image decoding. It cannot even 
handle animated GIFs as it is restricted to 
using Datatypes. It is however very stable, in 
fact AWeb has never crashed while in use. 
Something you can expect iBrowse and Voy- 
ager to do once or twice a day. 

When it comes to layout quality, I would 
say AWeb does the best job, but its palette 
selection and dependence on Datatypes 
ruins any chance it has when it comes to 
graphics quality. Generally I have found that 
Voyager and iBrowse give the same sort of 
performance both graphically and techni- 



cally. 

Which one wins then? 1 could sit on the 
fence and say, "At the end of the day the real 
winners are you and the Amiga," but that 
would be copping out. So, taking a look at 
each in turn - AWeb technically provides by 
far the best page layout and understands 
more tags than the others, but it is greatly let 
down by its very poor image handling and 
clunky interface. 




<Hl><CHNTER> 
<HZ> <DIV AUGN=^'ccnta"> 



^HSXPAt-WN-'ceoScr-V 




Wiaefy acc9pt«(l as the trsUing program in the hrowm«r wan* 
As you can see, AWeb aispfays almost every part of the page 
perfectly. The big exception is the image scaling part - the top 
two corner images should be a quarter of the size, and aiso 
the top GIF image is an animation GIF that AWeb cannot sup- 
port due to its dependence on Datatypem 



Amica Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 




The main thing that fift* ypu Is that 
IBrou/se decided not to dlaptay the text 
area term. Apparently if there Is no name 
attrlbutet iBrowse just ignores the form. 
Also you can see that iBrowse does not 
seem to support the list shapes even 
though it does have alternatives, but oth- 
erwise everything is hunlty dory 

iBrowse was once way ahead of the rest 
on all fronts, and I still think the layout and 
design of the front end are the best. It has its 
own progressive image decoder and can use 
Datatypes if need be, and it passed just 
about all the HTML tests. 

Generally, Voyager is taken to be the 



superior browser and I would have agreed, 
but having carefully tested Voyager it does 
seem to make a poorer job of HTML han- 
dling than iBrowse or AWeb. On the plus 
side it has the best image decoder, though 
its dithering and palette selection could be 
better (not a problem for graphic card 
users), and uses less memory than the other 
two. 

So, on efficiency and speed, Voyager wins. 
On design, iBrowse still leads and on tech- 
nical merit it has to be AWeb, with iBrowse 
and Voyager an equal second. 

Testing testing 

It is always difficult trying to comprehen- 
sively compare two programs, and with Web 
browsers the number of tags and possible 
combinations out there make it an almost 
endless task. So one possibility would be to 
look at a few general sites and see how the 
browsers handie them, but you could 
always end up missing some important tag. 
For a more formal task I used a prewritten 
test page found on 

www.threetoads.com/Srowser/main.html 
This takes the most regularly used and 
important tags and techniques on Web sites 
and puts them into one page. 




4 flt^for eyesore here is that Voyngcr h.TS 
spirt out the emtieddEd table, i have to say 
thsugft, that I have put tables in tables and 
Voyager has displayed those fine, so I'm not 
exactly sure why it doesn't like this one* 
The only other thing is Voyager ignores the 
sixe attribute for the horizontal rule 

The page tests frames, tables, imbedded 
tables, lists, heading and fonts sizes, image 
formats and scaling, forms and various 
other formatting commands. Generally, if a 
browser can display everything on this 
page, it should have no trouble in the real 
world. 



□ 



EATU 



COMPARISON 




As you can see, feature for feature, there really is very little to tell these 
three browsers apart The biggest omission is for AWeb - its dependence 
on Datatypes really does leave it trailing behind the others. Otherwise it 
would be keeping up with the "big two" quite well. 

For the metnory tests I ran the programs on a 64 colour 800x600 screen 
and loaded up the Amiga Computing main page. Using the avail com- 
mand I measured the amount of memory before and after each program 
was run. So you should remember that MU1 and ClassAct are also 
included in the values. 

URL completion is rather nice and is offered by iBrowse and Voyager. 
The simplest form works as for Netscape where you do not have to type 
the whole www.cnn.com only the cnn part and the browser fills in the 
rest They also offer history based URL completion, so the browser tries 
to guess the URL you want as you type it, but usually gets it wrong. 

The times at the end of the list siiows how long it took the browser to 
reload the Amiga Computing homepage, with no memory cache and two 
connections. As you can see, iBrowse is surprisingly slower than the other 
two at 18 seconds, turning the palette selection to fast and removing the 
secondary dithering does reduce this to 10 seconds. 



Browser 
Datatypes 
Prog, GIF 
Prog. Jpeg 
Prog. PNC 
Scaled images 
Animated GIFs 
H/USpace 



iBrowse 
yes 
yes 
yes 



Voyager 



Frames 
Hidden 
Moveable 

Lists 

New shapes 

Ordered 

HnPs 

Middle align 
Forms 

URL completion 
Connections 
Moiilla spoofing 



Drag and Drop 

Bookmarks 

Printing 

Keyboard 

Arexx 

Cut/Paste 

Chip Mem 
Fast Mem 
Total Mem 



yes 
external 



Tables 
BG colour 
BGgfx 
% Widths 



Javascript 
Java 



planned 

■> 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



Late Night Op^nin;; 

[ Wednesday & Thursday ] 

till 7.30pm 



LOW COST DELfVERY Tel: 0113 23 1 -9444 



.■^-' 



,c°' 






,<<^Co5i 



Open Sunday 
1 1 am to 4pnrt 



•2-4 Week Days £3.99 

•Next Week Day £5.99 

•Saturday Delivery £14.99 

Dclinrytubitataaockmailabilit/ 

SHOWROOM ADDRESS: 
FIRST COMPUTER CENTRE, ' 
DEPT. AC, UNIT 3. ARMLEY PARKCT, 
STANNINGLEY RD. LEEDS, LSI2 2AE 



Lombard! 
inance J 



tASr ACCtiS t-KOr-t Mi.;, mi And Al 
FIRST 
CCMVTB 
CFNTilE' 




Bvactn 

MIKES 
CARPETS 



vT M42/M62I 



COMPUTER CENTRE 







nil Tih<Mi)Ei'i'<efl] 



AUTHORISED REPAIR 
CENTRE 




OP£N7D4ySAW£EK 



quocacion on your Amij|a 

Or any peripheral 
(monitors, printers etc). 
A delivery tariff of just 
£5.00 is char^^dar 
alternatively you can visit 
our showroom- Wc can 
also arran|« a courier 
pickup at an additional 
cost ofiCI 1.00. 



|E-MaM:sales@firstcom.demon.co.ukFAX:OI 13231-9191 BBS^I 13 231-1422 



Hardware 



Amiga Magic Pacl<s 

Includes, Woi^worth V4SE, Dacascar^, Organiur, 
Turbocalc 3.5. PerwnaJ Paint V6A Photogenics 1 .2SE. 
Pinball Manta , Whizz & now also Directory Opus A. 1 2. 

A 1 200 -2Mb Ram- No HD £299.99 
A 1 200 - 6Mb Ram - 260Mb HD £429.99 
lA I 200 -68030ECMOMhi - 1 0Mb Ram - 260Mb HD -£S49.99 
AI2OO-68O40/25Mhi-l8MbRam- l.3GbHD • £699.99 
[AI2OO-68O40M0Mhz-l8MbRam- l.3GbHD - £799.99 

All HD Versions Include Scala MM300. All taOAO Ver. Inc. ISOwatt PSU 




Part-Exchange 2nd User 



First Computer Centre will offer Pan 
Exchange on your Computer Hardware 
Sc Peripnenils. eg Monitors. Printers S 
Memory etc.....Cail for pricing. 
2ncl User Bargains Available 

Totally re-furbished Units with a 

minimum 3 month warranty for sale, 

also all your Spares/Repairs catered jar 



Bargains 

• Commodore l084'sCl3C 

• Printer* from 110 

• Amiga's 500/*'s from £50 

• A]S{J0"sfrom£l5D 
Amf^aAi200'3£l&0 

• Multi^Sync monitor £180 

• Inkjet'^ frcrn £90 

^ Act:pl.'<rni:nr cnrd^ £B0 



Hard Drives 



f3.S" Hard Disk Drivesl 

IDE SCSI 

l.2Gig...£l4J. 99 270Mb £99.99 

1 .7Gig...£ 159.99 540Mb i 1 49.99 

2.IGig...£l69.99l.8Gig ..£249.99 

2.5Glg...£207.99l.lGig £i97.99 

>.2Gig...£220.99 4.3Gig £862.99j 



Build Your Own 
SCSI Hard Drive 

• SCSI case with built In PSU£49.99 

• SCSI Hard DrivE.Si.lcct Trom above 

• SCSI Squirrel lnterf3ce£4S.OO 

• 1 2 Month Warranty. 



2.5" Hard Drives for 

A600/AI200 with 

Installation kit 

SPseagate ccvat/? 

80Mb....£64.99 l30Mb....£B0.99 
l70Mb...£85.992S0Mb..£l 19.99 
420Mb.£ I 29,99 S40Mb..£ I 39.99 

810 £149.99 I.OGig..£l79.99 

l.4Gig..£t 95.99 2.2Gig..£322. 99 



3.5" H/Drive Install Kit £1 9.99 



Memory 



LOWEST PRICES EVER 
AI2a04MbRAM £70.99 
AI2008MbRAM £89.99 
33Mhz Co Pro add£25.0O 



JMb71PinSIMM [^097 

SMb72PjnSIMM Lis. 11 

lA Mb 72 pjnSIMK £69.99 

13 Mb 72 pinSIMM tl29 99 

IMbJOpinSlMM tB.»9 

4Mb30p(llSIMM £21,99 

25ibr4°RAM(OIU) <,.itbK4»9 

2SibHHPPS (ri:h)£6,99 

Part exchange; awatUble on your 
old memciry. Call for pricinK. 



Accelerator Cards 
Blizzard 1 230-SO £109.99 
Blizzard 1260-50 £369.99 
Blizzard SCSI Kit £69.99 
Viper IV 42Mhz £89.99 
Cyberstorm-50 £449.99 

N-'.v,'!i200MhzCard Call 



Monitors 



1701 £399.99 

1 7" Multi-Sync Monitor, 
"'■ LoweitCvcrpri'Ce. 



\M\G\ 



New 

Amig;; 
onito; ; 

Iti-Sync Monitors 
1438s r-\- 



l4"Hnnitnrlncludp' 



iikljtSi>f ,i3m, 



CD ROM Drives/Squirrel i/face 




CD ROM Drives 



Ultra 6 Speed IDE £ 1 49.99 
Ultra Drive Kit £99.99 



tf 



Squirrel scsi-ll 

lnterfacc*£4S.OO 



Surf SquirrektS* 

SCSI-ll Intorf^icp '^' 
*£79.99 




4X Speed 






Octagon/GVPSCSICard £99.99 



Internal SCSI CD ROM 
Sanyo CRDi2 £24.99 

To5hiba570lxl2 £112.99 

TcacCDxIi fl33.99 



or;i£69.99 



"cT?i=;;;s¥' 



Disk Drives 



N 

^121.99 



i[j TnuU Dritfhr Softw.Trc Suks 
Wn&UiiDriiti £14,99 



^1 



(^m iga External d rive£4 4 . 99i 
PowerXL 1.76Mb £69,99| 
ftl200/600lnternaldrivc£34 
,500/500+lntornaldrivc£34 



Pro-GRAB Only...£99.99 

24 R/TpCMCIAidjpwrO? 



Peripherals 



Mtj;.! Mi)usi'+ 400 dpi ( i bultDn) £ 

Amiga Houst SfiOdpi (3 bunorv) i 
Quality Houic^niAt (^mm) i 

Golden jrnagc Aoi/STTrackball i 

ZrFi-2 Speakers (S watis/channel) £ 
ZjfFi Pro Speakers ( I S waCt^'ehArirtd) t ; 
Roboshift (Auto mousc/J. stick swiichi 

ifBin Co Pro 25mh2 PLCC i 

68832 Co ProSamhtPLCC i 

Zip<.tli:l<jld)rtTick I 

SaitekMcgAgripli ( 
PRIMAASOQ^ElkRAMnoclock 
PHIMAA^OD> EMbRAK 
PRIMA A£OQ I MbRAM nDclock 



Amiga Modulator £34.99 
Amiga Std.PSU £29.99 
He^vyDuty PSU £59,99 




Printers/Flatbed Scanners 



ICanoiil 

C.inonBJ30 £159.99 

P3fTibl>i monoprlnti'r, K p»t* ''^^ bvUt In. 

C.inonBICTOColour £185.99 

Paruai«>[olDiurprlntrr, 10p<|* AiF. 

C.inanBJJ40C £150.99 

CoiO.|rrrtn(".nfl'ipl 

Canon BJC-tlOD £199.99 

imnltitt, wbrh Phoio R*«liltm CvL OpUon 

Canon BJC-IBSO £369.99 

AJ venion. wlib Phftw R-raJlirn G»r(. Opti(in 

Canon BJC620 £249.99 

EnharHrdcDfaxjrprinlpT.vlrliulTJad^. 



HEWLETT 
PACKARD 



dJ 



Stylus400Colour £189.99 

Stylus fiOOCotoiir £259.99 

Stylus 800 Colour £199.99 

t4l'()dlp(,lt>pn) BJA4k, TppmCotou'. 

Epson GT-SOOO!,<*„nr. £269.99 

EnriY l^veJ f<* Calour FIiHh d Scanner. 

Epson GT-SSOO £399.99 

^<^Odpi FLlhyIc*wrr^AJCD)ourFl4.Ih=CS<af,r^rr 

Amiga Scanning S.ware £59.99 



CITIZEN 



HP J -IOC Pon.ibk- £ 1 79.99 

FijUC:(ilour.«OCil|:inono,10Ddpl Ci>l. 

HP^OOCotour £139,99 

Colour. iOa dpinoiw. IIM [tpi CcJ. 



Simpi« |u ^iiy Jt ARC) ED uu- II pr. printt-w 
Comn a tiVhUnJ with SO ihrrt Auti:i ihr«-[ fr*d 



HP670Colour 

JMxJW (lp(Ci*>Mr Prifrt.r*tr 

HP870 Colour 

««>■ HO itp4 up ID 4 p-'p/m mufi 

HPSLLasL'rprint*'r 

i,104dpJ. IMbcrRtm. 

HP6PL.is(rpriiu..r 



£154.99 

'""£3sT99 

>. )p'f>'m f^jfotir 

£279.99 



Studio 2Newvet, 2.14 

'Ifft^ a-onllafclEJw^Ht pftflib4f rcduftt 

fr^m four p/intir. fM copr of Sn>4io'> 

£49.99 or£44.99when 

purchjugd with a Printer. 

Turboprint 5 £49.99 

or if bought with Printer £<4.99. 



ACCESSORIES 
Printer Sv^itch Box 2 *vay 
PrinterSwilch BOK 3 "vay 
1 .8 Mvtrt: prtrtercable 
1 Hvtre p rimer c^lc 
5 M'Ptre'printer'Cabfe 
1 Metre prtntercable 



£12,99 
£17,99 
t4,99 
It 19 
ta.99 
4:U,99 



Ep*on Iron-On Triosrer i n.99 
EpionTlD dpi Papt^r Pack il2 99 

Canon T-Shirt Transfer 1 1 1,1 ■? 

CanpitQC-O A Photo Cart. i2-i.99 
ion BC-09 Fluorescent £^4.99 
ion BC'2Z Photo Kit £.37.99 

Cani>nBC-29 Fluorescent £32.99 

Canon Bubble fijt Paper £ I -J.?? 



HPDJS^OPhotoCartridgc 119.^') 
HP Photography Paper CJ 91 

HP Banner Pap^r (fl ?■) 

HPDeikietPaporPack SDO£I0.99 
HP Premium Glossy Paper £9 fJ 

PREMIER-INK 

Ink Cartridge Refills 

Siiiglerenils (22ml) [t.99 

Twinrrfills [44nit) £1299 

Thrcctolourkit (iSml) £1799 

Fiillcotntirkil (SSml) 117 11 

Btilkfcr.lU (] 25m|) £44 99, 



Consunnables 



Ribbons 

£3 7.99 Citii«nSwifL.'ABCmono 

£l&.?9 CJti»nSwift.'ABC<:olour 

£12.99 Star LC90 mono ribbon 

(10.99 StarLCIO/IOOmono 

£17.99 SearLCtO/rOOcotour 

416.99 SearLCJ-tOctofour 

Lt.if Star LC240C mono 

ta.^9'£r99 StarLC24-IO,aOO/10DCo!oui 



Ink Carcridges 

CaronBjiO/StarSJ48 

Canon 61200/230.240 

Canon BJ30(3 pack) 

Canon BJC TO ntono {i pack) 

Canon BJC 7 colour (3 pack) 

Canon B] C 4000 colour {lin^re) 

Canon BJC 4M0 mono (single) 

Canon BJC 4000 mono high cap. 

Canon BJC 600 mono/col 

CiliTcnPnntivamonofcoT. £S.<J9 Rc.lnhSpr 

Citiie(iPi-in!,iM.iMetallic5 £IS.-I9 

Citizen Projet lie mono/col. £4.99'£29.5 9 

HP. Deskjet 340 monoJcol. £2L95'£26.99 

HP. Deskjet 400 monO*COl. £:2.99.£2J.9 9 

HP.DeskjetSOOmonoicol. £3 2. 99^^24. ?9 

HP.DBskiet6fi0mono/toL t23.99/£25.99 

MP. Deskjet flSOCmonofcol. £27.49/£28.99 

Epson Styluf KOOniono £1 I.V9 

Epson Stylus mono/cot. L I 3.99'£27,99 

Epson Stylus Col. I Is mono/toU I 7.99'£ 24.99 

Epson Stylui SOD tnonokol. £li,99/£24.99 

£p«on Stylus 400 mono/col. £ t £,99.'£ I 9.99 

Epson Siylui 600 mono/col. £ 1 1 ,99/£ I 9.99 

EpsoTi Stylus BOO mono/col. £ 1 ?,99^ £ I 9.99 



lyfori 



£3.6? 

£7. 99 
£IJ.?9 

iB.9? 

iS.99 
CIJ-99 



ribbons £1 1.99 



Software 



Star SJ I 44 nionoJ'colour (single) 

Paper 

F.fold or S, jhcet 500 sheets 
F.fold or S. iheet I OOQ sheets 
F.fotd or S, sheet2000 sheets 
Quality Inhjct Paper (500) 



£7 99 



£6,99 
£13 19 



F.V*/riter Lte £ I 9.99 

Wordworth 6 t39.99 

W.ortli Office £49.99 

Mini OfTicc £29.99 

Final Calc £64.99 

Final Writer 97 £49.99 

Twist Z £74.99 

Dir. Opus 5.5 £45.99 

Pro MIDI I/face £19.99 

MegaLoSounii £24.99 
AuraSn* £29.99;£74.99 
Technosound Pro £29.99 

Network PC £17.99 



Disks 




BulkDSDD 
I0«£3.J9 IOll>,iC24,99 
30x£9.« I0(lx£4?.99 
5axCN.99 500x(ll4,99 

Branded DSDD 
lOxt-l.-tS <00x£33.99 
3(lx£ll.99 2(J0!!£6J.99 
SKsiC 17.99 560 X £155,99 
Biiik DSHD 
I0x£3.99 1 00 X £29.99 

3lJx £10.99 200 X £55.99 
50x£lt.99 SOOx £129.99 
Branded DSHD 
I0x£4.99 I00x£35.99 

30x£l2.99 2O0x£69,99 
SOx £18.99 500x£l59_99 
■' £6.99 ) 

■ £9.99 I 



E 



Modems 



PRIMA 



IV34+ Fax 
Modem 



Amazing Pi-icf/ Performance 

• 33.6 Baud RaCe*C1ass I Fax 

• BABT 4 CE approved. 

Only..£80.99 

Complete with cabfaA Amiga BBS Software 



i 



Surfware Inttrnct Software Suite, 
with 30 Days Free IntcrnttTrial 
Only £9 99, if hni[?:ht with Mntfpm 



Software 



Miscellaneous 



GPFax 


£44.99 


Net&Web 


£29.99 


Net&Web II 


£66.99 


i Browse 


£24,99 


Net Connect v2 


£49.99 


Voyager v3 


£23.00 



Modem Accessories 
Phone Line Extension Cables 

5m£6.99 I0m£8,99 I5m£l0.99 
Dual Socket Adaptor..£6.99 



PRIMA 



rhe Prima 
ATOM 



Heavy Duty PSU 

• High Quality 200 Watt PSU. 

• ColaurCo-OrdlnaCcd Casmj;. 
•4 X The Power of Std. Amiga PSU 

• 1 2 Month Warranty. 

Now Only,_^ __ 
'£59.99 



"^"^^ CD ROM Software ^^. 



AGA Experience 3 NEA 
AGAToolkit97 
Arnica Desktop Vidfo 2 
Amiga Developers CD 
Amiga RepiirKit 
AmiNctl4'IS'lfin7/IB 
AmlNctSctia 
AmiNetSet3M 
Arcade Clauin Plus 
AssiiiiniCDVot.3 
C64 Sensations v2 
Card Gam eiCD 
EmuTators UnlimJttd 
Encouniers 
Epic Collection J 
tr-r-- FnfTflnir-ff!i^97 



c. I :? 9'? 
iV <i9 

CU91 

Li; 9? 

£19fl9 

1 1 !■ ?9 
£17 99 

£11 99 
£1759 
£16.?! 
£l2fl9 
£17.99 
£[;99 
([T99 



GoldPHDi-mos 
Horror Sensations (IB) 
Into- 1 he- Net 
Inii^htDinouurs 
Kara Col lection 
Learning,Curve 
l,ight ROM 4 
Light ROM Cold 
Magic Publistier 
Ha^ WB Enhancer 
Mettiflg Pearls t4 
MbmifrlnToTheHet 
ModsAnthdogy 
MiitltmcrfiaTooJkitl+2 
Network 2 CD 
N<>rwf>-kT 'CD77C:ibl>- 



£17.!?' 
£l?.9? 
£12.99 

n.5 99 

£17.99 
£17.99 
£12.99 
£J9.?? 

£3.99 
£27.99 
£1399 
£1799 
£iL«? 



Octamcd 6* Sounds Tcri 
Ot tamed Sound Studio 
Oh Yei More Worms 
PCX xBS Emulator 
Photogrnicsl 
Paranormal Encyc^pedia 
PrimaSharcwarelCD 
Retro Gold CD 
Sti-Fi Stnsation I 
Space &. Astronomi' 
System Booster 
TJieSpeetrtimCDS* 
The Personal Suite 
Workbench Add -Om 
WwnenOfTheWfb 
X-CD 



in •)■ 

£J| 9? 

n tf 

HI t"^ 
£lb ^ 

1 1 '.■;■■ 
m *' 

£17.?' 
£:D9' 





Ofew years back when I was still 
at university I came across some 
Postscript documents that I 
needed to read and, more use- 
fully, print out. At the time I had no software 
that could handle Postscript files and I was 
not in a position to run off and buy any, so I 
took a quick look through Aminet. 

I saw two possible programs, one used 
the Post library but I could never get it to 
work, while the other was a program dis- 
tributed under the GNU licence and had the 
odd name of Ghostscript. But who cares 
what it is called when it can display and 
print Postscript files perfectly? 

Postscript is a page description language 
thought up by Adobe. As Adobe wrote the 
industry standard page layout software, 
Quark Express, Postscript has itself become 
an Industry standard. It simply allows com- 
puters to define how a page, screen or pic- 
ture should look, but in terms of straight 
lines, curves and shaded areas. OK, it is a lit- 
tle more complicated than that, but those 
are the basics. 

Ghostscript is pretty straight fonward to 
use. From the shell, supply the Postscript 
filename you want it to display. It will then, 
page by page, create each, well, page. For 
EPS images it just draws the image in colour 
if you tell it to use its own screen. 



friQ pnachm 




1 Neil Mohr takes a 

look at a free program 
that gives everyone 
easy access to 
Postscript documents 

The one important thing you need to 
remember is to increase the amount of sys- 
tem stack available. To do this before you 
run Ghostscript you need to type stack 
20000 into the Shell - this makes sure the 
program has enough workspace, otherwise 
it can crash. If at any time Ghostscript does 
crash, the stack being too small is more than 
likely the culprit. 

As Ghostscript is designed to work with 



PTIhAT TO GET 



The Ghostscript package is freely avail- 
able for Amiga users from Aminet So if 
you are on-line you can download the 
package yourself. Both the main exe- 
cutable and data file add up to Just over 
I Mb, so downloading should take about 
10 minutes. Otherwise rt should be on 
either the Aminet set box or tiie latest 
Aminet CD release, you could also use 
one of the PD house that offer down- 
load services. 

So if you are interested in Ghost- 
script, FTP to your local Aminet site and 
go to the gfx/show directory. All the 
Ghostscript related archives start with 
gs followed by the version number, cur- 
rently 501. 

If you want the main program itself 
you have to know what processor you 
have, as there are a number of different 



versions compiled specifically for cer- 
tain processor types. If in doubt just get 
the one called gs50l_000,lha as this will 
run on any Amiga. If you know what 
processor you have and if it has an FPU, 
go for the correct archive. 

Along with the program archive you 
need the data archive called 
g5501_data.lha. With these two archives 
you can get Ghostscript up and running. 
Extract both the archives and make an 
assign to the Ghostscript directory 
called Ghostscript - so the program 
knows where to look for its files. 

You should also consider getting the 
fonts archive that has all the Postscript 
fonts you will need. The archive Is called 
gsSOl fnts-std.Iha and is I.SMb but is 
worth getting if you are going to view a 
lot of text files. 



many different computer systems It handles 
the output - whether it be to a printer, win- 
dow or screen - in much the same way. All 
this has to be selected through the Amiga's 
Shell using the DEVICE switch. 

So, for instance, if you want to tell Ghost- 
script that you want it to run on its own cus- 
tom screen you have to use the 
DEVICEamiga_custom switch. When you run 
Ghostscript it will pop up a screen mode 
requester from which you can select a 
screen mode. So, depending on which 
processor version of Ghostscript you are 
using, you would type the following: 

' %iJM -DEVICEsiiga.custoi eiiiptcsftigtr.ps 

Using this technique you can also tell Ghost- 
script to output a document directly to a 
printer. Using the -DEVICEamiga_printer 
switch it will use the built in Amiga printer 
driver, but Ghostscript has internal handling 
for quite a large number of printers such as 
Epson, deskjet and laserjet printers - stan- 
dards that many printers can handle. To find 
out which are supported, type gs_OO0 -h for 
a complete list. 



Viewing or 
printing taxt 
documents is the 
primary us& for 
Ghostscript 




Coloured EPS 

artwork can be 

used by Gfiost 

script without 

a problem 

nmxsmssm 

OCTOBER 1997 






Share and 




nne thing you will notice if you 
liave spent any time down- 
loading programs from Aminet 
or have tried them out from 
the CDs is that, nine times out of ten, the 
person who wrote the program does not 
come from the same country as yourself. 
This is somewhat of a tribute to how wide- 
spread the Amiga community is, and how 
the Internet has managed to keep it knit- 
ted tightly together over the last few trou- 
bled years. 

This may give you a warm glow inside, 
but if the program in question happens to 
be a crippled shareware product that you 
have to get your hands on, payment to for- 
eign country is not simplest or cheapest 
thing to achieve. 

Your first choice is to send off a cheque 
or better, a cheque drawn under a foreign 
bank, but this could cost you or the payee 
more than the payment itself. So perhaps 
you could get the foreign cash from a bank 
and send that off in an envelope - doesn't 
cost you too much, but there is always the 
risk it could go astray in the post. Lately, 
some authors have started to accept credit 
cards but do you really want to give out 
you credit card number to some stranger 
on the other side of the world? 

This was just one of many reasons SASG 
- the Standardised Amiga Shareware 
Croup- was formed in early 1994. Shortly 
after Commodore went bankrupt, a couple 



share 




Amiga Computing tal<es a look at the 

rganisation, 
year 



, long running shareware o 
^ SASG, as it enters its third 



of well-known shareware author; 
got together and their aim was ti 
create a non profit making organisa- 
tion that would support both the 
programmer and end user. 

Its first objective was to set up a 
system that would allow the pro- 
grammer to receive 100 per cent of 
the registration fee. This system 
guarantees that software program 
mers do not get exploited and en 
users can register high quality appli 
cations for around £15. 

As the price is low, more end users are 



/ recently registered my demo 
of MUl, and was very 
impressed with the speed 
and service. If all shareware 
was so easy to register, I 
would do it at least once a 
month! All shareware should 
be brokered through SASC! 
Dan Carmack, Missiouri 



[^AD 



FOR 



I think it's safe to say that, over the years, 
Amiga Computing has been one of the 
strongest backers of the Magic User Inter- 
face. Being the sort of magazine to 
encourage readers to upgrade their 
machines, we were never put off by the 
slightly higher memory and processor 
requirements MUl needed. 

Essentially, MUl filled a gaping hole in 
the Amiga operating system - a simple 
way for programmers to add a scaleable, 
font sensitive interface to their programs 
- but MUl went beyond even this. 
Through its object oriented design, each 
part of MUl is independently upgradable 
and can be extended by third parties by 
straight forward MUl plug-ins libraries 
that can add almost infinite possibilities 
to the interface. 



The flexibie nature of MUl has now 
been exploited by a vast number of pro- 
grams and that number continues to rise. 
Currently, the most publicly visible pro- 
grams come from Vapor Software and its 
incredible range of Internet software. 



Qet 



willing to register and 
support the development 
of the product. This results 
in a better maintained 
product with lots of new 
features. More recently, 
SASG has started to offer 
reduced prices not only to 
reward users who 
upgrade to later versions 
of their registered soft- 
ware, but also (or general 
supporters of shareware. 
By the time you read 
this the organisation's Web site 
will be just over one year old and 
has easily topped the 100,000 hits 
mark, so congratulations are due. SASG 



CHEAP STUFF 




A9 Magic User Interface is a SASQ 
^ffckad product, it has its v&ry own 
page in the beautiful sit& styl& 



Well you have read about all the great stuff that is available 
from SASC and I'm sure you may thinking well I would love to 
get a registered copy of MUl or MagicWB. In conjunction with 
the lovely people at SASC Amiga Computing readers who are 
on-line can register SASG products on-line and receive a 20 
percent discount 

All you have to do is get on-line browser to 
http://vvww.sa5g.com, select the product you want and go to 
the ordering page. At the bottom there is a cycle gadget from 
which you will be able to select Amiga Computing. When you 
have entered all your details the password you need is 

Tusken 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



^. 1^ kS* 



U«*W»^ ^taip!//4riOar.«BSCCff>7" 



ImISO 



^^E 



[nsuaijHsi 



"iQ.i q.i^ [ 




has not been siow to take advantage of its 
Web presence - with a Web site you give 
people all over the world access to your 
products and any services that you care to 
provide. 

SASC has been quick to explore all pos- 
sible alternatives and it can now offer 
almost every type of ordering including 
conventional mail and fax services. A basic 
e-mail service that allows users to e-mail 
their credit card number to 5ASG is also 
present and additional protection is avail- 



able in the form of PGP protected mails. 

For an even more secure form of order- 
ing, there are now facilities to use an SSL 
capable browser to safely send your credit 
details in an encrypted message. For 
added peace of mind, a final option is to 
use FirstVirtual. This is the first Internet 
bank, providing a near 100 per cent secure 
system of ordering products over the Inter- 
net using a credit card, 

FirstVirtual is so safe because your credit 
card details are never actually transmitted 



over the Internet. When you apply for an 
account with FirstVirtual you are supplied 
with a PIN number, this being an alias for 
your credit card number. Whenever your 
PIN number is used to make a purchase, a 
confirmation form is e-mailed to you and 
you must reply yes, no or fraud before the 
transaction is made. So if someone does 
try to use your PIN you will know straight 
away and purchases cannot be made with- 
out your consent. 



-■!&// ^y* Mij ;tf-./:3-tas^--^rag ji*o -**c«au 



Jjj^ 







Pleaieftclcclycui" ordering rr.pll; 






BL^M . pCyTWWwWrWr^WUW 






^^m 



HAT S MAGIC 



0^ MorpcVVG' 



I think MagicWB is really a very cleverly disguised computer virus. If you look 
at how quickly it can jump from machine to machine, there could be no other 
explanation. To quote Amiga Magaiine, "You'll think you have just b'""*" 
another computer!" MagicWB transforms your lifeless two dimensional 
modore icons into more dynamic 3-D ones, with a general stone granite feel 
to them. 

One last note. If you were wondering who the artistic genius behind 
icWB is, it is Martin Huttenloher the same person who designed the SASG^ 
site, so it is no wonder they both look so impressive. 




VMCtrwn'j 



Or<fw IF* 



No wonder the whole site looks so good 
done by the man bohind tho MagicWB ice 



1 iliiiik you just bouglu a iiev/ com puKri" 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



The perfect couple 



HEVIEyj 





ft^im 



ll '$ a combination ot Mega Lo 
Mania and Settlers Gee da 
you remember Mega Lo 
Mania ? 'The production run 's 
completed'. We can have a 
voice mimicing Irenzynow. 








PinboB 

IS bsck again 

Qncoaffam yuu csn 

derive phasufe 

tjouncingpfeiefid 

bails around a labSe 



.review 

We look (II 
Max Ruth 





IM) VJi^Jh^B 



David Asdes Ihrougn 2,000 
post If notes on his desk to Rnd 
a jo/slick to play it. 



MediaSoft 



[*II 



For the serious Amiga user. For the Amiga gamer. 




^^ miga Review is a mail-order magazine dedicated lo 
l^|^ the serious side of the Amiga market. If you're 

interested in tfie more productive usage of the 
' Amiga then this is the magazine for you. 

Currently on issue five, the main cover feature looks 
at the future of the Amiga. We talk to the companies behind 
the Amiga market, speak direct to PeSro Tyschtshenko, and 
more importantly, find out what you, the Amiga users wan I. 

We give you tutorials on everything from OctaMED 
to AMOS and C. We have regular columns dedicated lo DTP, 
Coding, the internet, the world wide web, Amiga hardware, Art 
& Graphics, Music and Business, Amiga Review is now on 
issue five, and with a cover price of E1 .60, what are you 

waiting for? Got an Amiga? Get i 11/ ' | 

Amiga Review. If you don't, we'll l-\ I / \ '- > 1_ 
jus! be very upset and cry, iiBViB'j'J 



Hmiga Gamer is the magazine for Amiga games 
players. In fact it's the only magazine available for 
Amiga games players. That means we have a 
monopoly! Wahey. 
Every issue, we spoil you with the lalest in essential 
gaming news, in-depth interviews {'Do any of you have 
beards?' we asked Andrew Reed of Alive Mediasoft). 
previews of the newest games {'Gilberl Goodmate? Would 
you be seen buying a game wilh this name?' we said, 
strangely enough, of Prelusion's Gilbert Goodmate). reviews, 
columns, letters (Isabelle Rees is back!) and more. We're 
more fabulous than any games magazine there ever was. 
Ever. So, if you want non-stop Amiga games information 
delivered to your door then ^ a Bi^" |«li_J - -• i 
Amiga Gamer should be your f"^]^,^ ^^ M- \'S j) 
only choice. For only £1.50. -^ SJ / I ' ■ i f\ 



r/ 



Order now 



Wafne_ 



Address_ 



_PostCode_ 



Country_ 



Please send this form to MediaSoft Magazines. Communications 

House. Isle of Wight. P037 7LU. 

Or call 01983 867377 Ot visit 

hUp://www.mediasft. demon.co. uk/ARMagazine/arindex.hlml 



Please send me (tick box) 

n Amiga Review Trial Copy El .60 

D Amiga Gamer Trial Copy El .50 

n Amiga Review and Amiga Gamer Trial Copy £3.00 

n Three issue trial subs lo Amiga Review £4.60 

D Three issue trial subscription to Amiga Gamer £4.50 

D Three issue trial subs lo Gamer and Review £9.00 

Please make cheques and POs payable to MediaSoft Magazines 

Mediasoft Telling 0- khi :-h /x 



Woridwide 



Onyone who happens to read The 
Times or The Daily Telegrapt) or 
their on-line equivalents may 
have heard of a chap called 
David Hewson. He's a novelist and com- 
puter journalist who wrote a column for the 
former publication which was subsequently 
published on the Internet. In this he man- 
aged to anger just about every non-Wintel 
computer user in the world by claiming they 
all used "Zombie" machines which should 
have been buried years ago. 

Every remaining Amiga user knows that 
the onslaught of the Wintel "standard" has 
been frighteningly rapid and overpowering. 
Users of platforms like the Amiga and the 
Macintosh know their machines have a lot 
left to offer, but the vast majority of new- 
comers to the computing world have no 
knowledge of the vital roles these machines 
played in computing history and the user- 
friendly alternatives they offer to Wintel 
clones, 

Hewson daimed that "a tiny minority" of 
computer users are foolishly ignoring the 
"industry standard" by refusing to switch to 
Windows PCs. Although the Telegraph sub- 
sequently identified the machines in ques- 
tion ("Acorn computers, the Atari ST, PCs 
running Linux or OS/2, the Amiga"), Hewson 
insists that the original article referred pri- 
marily to Acorn machines - possibly high- 
lighting further his curious ignorance of the 
machine we all love. 

Hewson doesn't pull any punches. As the 
Telegraph feature pointed out, in the past 
he's called Linux a "nasty piece of digital 
scurf" and a "program from hell" suitable 



Dave Cusick assesses whether the 
Amiga can realistically play a significant 
role in the connputing world of the future 



only for "bug-eyed computer users" 
whoseideaoffunwasto"dreamin 
hexadecimal". He's also criticised 
the Apple Macintosh extensively, 
and has even gone so far as to call 
Acorn users "Confused, wacky peo- 
ple, a little like the Tranmere Rovers 
supporters' club, only less numer- 
ous and twice as mouthy". Rather 
harsh assessments of genuine 
computer enthusiasts and sweeping gener- 
alisations like these have, unsurprisingly 
helped ensure his e-mail in-box has been 
full of flames over the last few months. 

Hewson claims that these days there is no 
valid reason for not investing in a Windows 
PC, and that the non-Wintel fans who say 
otherwise are kidding themselves. Some 
unlikely candidates have leapt to his 
defence too - including Stewart Campbell, 
the former managing editor of Amiga Power 
magazine, who told the Telegraph that 




C<iclanaiDe."MERAFr 

TjUiaYtaloJaw 



ff I ina t w J miw m - j-_ 



HBH 






Meratii could help 
the Amiga adapt to 
the modern 
computing world 



many Amiga fans have a "siege- 
mentality" that is "over the top". 
When 1 originally found out 
about Hewson's ranting 1 e-mailed 
him and pointed out several rea- 
sons why I believe that he is 
wrong to write off machines like 
the Amiga, and some of these 
points ! feel are worth raising here. 
As a former writer for ST User 
magazine I've been around when a machine 
has been in its death throes, but the situa- 
tion regarding the Amiga is rather different. 
Thanks primarily to the continuing loyalty of 
genuine Amiga fanatics, a hard core of com- 
panies that still develop for the machine and 
the vocal Amiga community on the Internet, 
the machine still has a presence - even if it 
is far less than at the height of its popularity. 
As Macintosh users will testify, it's not just 
stubbornness that prevents non-Wintel 
users from embracing the Microsoft dream 



ftti ft^r>i^ nm furt 




Amiga News is a great on-Hne resource yav 
might want to turn to after AC has gone... 



as is the Amiga Web Directory 



Amica Computing 



OCTOBER J 997 



". tiVcr&soft Ccrpof^tlQtj Home P^ee: ^'elcome to Mtcf'3Si>TX * Netscjp& HHO 



EHe £tflt yiw 






Se*th 



Pirt 






, f 'Ec^fi^jrit X L«*on|t«p//wwwiii»cio:i3ncoiiVi>'*i*«^ 



:i 



Where do you e/^rt to 



Microsoft 




^ Wcnisoft RgfaisBK EnCTiTB Conda Encvdopgdli 

T>ii£ FPEE Web vefstan of out bKl-seHmq ffiutiirrvedia «r>cyclopedia 'tealwei 
mora ihAn IG.QOQ flifMfll]^ ^Mnritn anic<#^ faacksd up with more titan 2^SXJ 
pholot. Antration^.mVi^. charts and tifa9«S 

' MioTOoft B«CTbill 3D inJ Aq» of Emalri Win 

Al EB El Atl.2n!a.apAti«1ef»tADis Hm t^etop g^nwi^ public at jon? stitcted 
Micm-saC Basebafl 3D as the B«£t Sports ^ime and A^t of Enures tht Btst 

^ How Awilabla: Vtaual Baric 5.Q Rwouict Edtoi ^ 

RttOvt* EdiOc optrUK tttittiy mihM\ l?w Visual Btvc rfVttfualtd 
iiBW»IO p Trnn| «*iiirttf>m»nt tt'S *4iUt^ Hfe 10 i»9rtt*i(«d 0<«n««S 0( Vrsutl 
Bvstcia 






aa5l»rt|^Wic)osof-..| |[SAf/^roii?... •^;nl9met...|^ Oemon2 |@SCT9OTr...| i0ttia 00:04 
Although It may pain loyal Amigans, it's lime to accept that Mierotalt has become too 
strong to mimply dismiss, or even to challenge head on. In the future OBteway 2000 is 
going to have to find new strengths upon which to base Amiga marketing 



of total uniformity, it's also a genuine belief 
that the computer world should not ignore a 
machine which, if not technically superior 
any more, remains more intuitive, more 
user-friendly, more flexible and less power- 
hungry. 

Whereas the constant-upgrade mentality 
and "Bloatware" are now accepted in the PC 
field, Amiga developers still thoughtfully 
write software which, while making the 
most of advanced machine features where 
available, will run perfectly happily on rela- 
tively inexpensive systems. 

Admittedly the Anniga is in need of tech- 
nical development, not having moved on 
significantly for five years now. But the new 
Amiga owner, Gateway 2000, is the first 
company since the Commodore era with 
sufficient resources to fund this develop- 
ment (even if Commodore did father less 
development than it ought to). 

There will always be enthusiasts eager to 
upgrade their machines using specialist 
boards from companies such as Phase 5 - 
and I'm one of them, hankering after a 
PowerUp board for my A1200 - but these 
boards are not going to appeal to the mass 
market or those who aren't "in the know". 

If a potential buyer was to walk into a 
high-street computer shop, the chances are 
they wouldn't see a single Amiga - and in 
the improbable event that the shop assis- 
tants even knew what one was, they would 



be unlikely to be able to lay their hands on 
anything other than a plain vanilla Al 200, a 
machine which originally appeared in 1992 
and has not been updated or improved 
since. The only other machine in the cur- 
rently available Amiga range is the aimost- 
as-ancient A4000, and there are probably 
now only a handful of mail-order firms In 
the UK which could supply one. 

Having said that, even today the standard 
A1200 represents reasonably good value for 
money. It's not possible to get on the Inter- 
net with a low-end Pentium PC for less than 
around £800, but you could pick up an 
A 1200, a 33 k6 modem and a copy of Net- 
connect for a little less than that and, if cash 
was tight, you could always skimp on the 
monitor in favour of a television set. Indeed, 
it is the Internet which 1 believe has been a 
key force in helping the Amiga suraive this 
long, and which I think must play a signifi- 
cant role in its future if that future is going to 
be a bright one. 

But even the Internet cannot alone guar- 
antee the survival of the Amiga. In common 
with an increasing number of Amiga Neti- 
zens I see Sun iWicrosystems as being its 
potential saviour, however unlikely that 
might sound. Far more than simply being a 
means of producing fancy Web pages, Sun's 
Java technology offers the possibility of run- 
ning powerful Java-authored applications 
from software industry heavyweights such 



PTIeb Sites of Interest 

David Hewsoii's Web Page - http://vinivw.hevvson.demon.co.uk/ 

Gateway 2000 UK - http:/ Avww.gw2k.co.uk/ 

Haage & Partner - http://ounrt/oild.compusen/e.com/homepages/Haage_Partner/ 

Sun Microsystems - http://www.sun.com/ 

Java FAQ - http://wvw-net.com/java/faq/ 

Dave Cusick's Web Page - http://wvvw.dcus.demon.co.uk/ 







if you get really desperate for information you 
could always check out my Web site... 



as Corel and Microsoft on any system for 
which a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is avail- 
able. 

With the imminent release of Haage & 
Partner's Merapi, the Amiga will have its first 
JVM before even Windows 95 has a reliable 
and popular one. If Haage & Partner get it 
right, the Amiga could find a new niche as 
an affordable machine on which to run 
heavyweight applications without the need 
for heavyweight hardware. This will give the 
Amiga an advantage over the similarly- 
priced NetPCs now being pushed by com- 
panies such as IBM and, of course, the 
Amiga will still be able to do everything a 
"proper" PC can do, whereas NetPCs won't 
Gateway 2000's role must surely be to seize 
the opportunity and push the Amiga as it 
hasn't been pushed for years. 

David Hewson is right when he says that 
universal compatibility is the way forward, 
but he's wrong to claim that switching to 
Wintel boxes is the only way of achieving 
this compatibility. Java technology means 
that users can select the native operating 
system of their choice, and yet still make use 
of cutting-edge, heavyweight applications - 
even Microsoft has seen this, hence its 
rumoured moves to produce 100 per cent 
Java versions of industry standard packages 
such as MS Word. 

If the computer world wakes up to the 
fact that there is an affordable machine 
which can run that package, while simulta- 
neously splitting CPU time between raytrac- 
ing an animation and downloading a file 
from an FTP site, then there may yet be a 
future for our beloved Amiga. 



^^BB^ssmsmssamsmm 




The Wintel revolution has been frighteningly fast 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



White Knight 

Technology 




FREEPO 



We Supply The Entire Range of Accelerators & Graptiics Cards From 




AcauuTfti Sunt 




I) 1 Ci 



BUZARD 




J>PC 



J>PC 



ik Series Accelerators 




For A3000 / A4000 

CYBERSTORM MK2 

68060, 50MH2 £ 399 

68040, 40MHz £ 245 

SCSI-2 Controller £ 65 



BUI^ARD 

3040 ERC 



ForA1500&A2000 
BLIZZARD 2060 & 2040 

68060, 50MHz + SCSI E 399 
68040, 40MHz + SCSI £ 245 





For A1 200 Only 
BUZZARD 1260, 1240, 1230 

68060, 50MHz £ 325 

68040, 40MHz, N«d.,™cr £195 
68030, 50MHz £ 95 

SCSI Controller £ 65 

FPU for 1230-!V £ 45 



vuium 



^ 






»<w** 



ForA1500& A2000 
150MHz PPG 604e & SCSI-3 

with 68060, 50MHz £ 759 

with 68040, 40MHz £ 589 

with 68040, 25MHz £ 559 

180MHz PPG 604e & SCSI-3 

with 68060, 50MHz £ 839 

with 68040, 40MHz £ 669 

with 68040, 25MHz £ 639 

200MHz PPC 604e & SCSI-3 

with 68060, 50MHz £ 929 

with 68040, 40MHz £ 759 
with 68040, 25MHz £ 729 

Also available without 040 or 060 



For A3000 & A4000 
150MHz PPC 604e & SGSI-3 

with 68060, 50MH2 £ 739 

with 68040, 40MHz £ 569 

with 68040, 25MHz £ 539 

180MHz PPC 604e & SCSI-3 

with 68060, 50MHz £ 799 

with 68040, 40MHz £ 639 

with 68040, 25MHz £ 599 

200MHz PPC 604e & SCSI-3 

with 68060, SOMHz £ 899 
with 68040, 40MH2 £ 729 
with 68040, 25MH2 £ 669 



tX" 



vO' 

AmtCA- COSS POWERPC" ^^ ** 

Phase 5 PPC Accelerators are also avcill^blo 
wlltiout a fi8K CPU, for existing 030, 040 Or 060 
(^cceterator owners. Call us tor furlfier de)ail&. 
H you already have a Cyberstorm or Bliizafd. 
pfesse call us tor speciail upgrade prices. 

150MHz PPC 604e & SCSI-3 

No 68k Series CPU £ 495 
180MHz PPC 604e & SCSl-3 
No 68k Series CPU £ 565 
200MHz PPC 604e & SCSI-3 
No 68k Series CPU £ 655 

<&7B^¥ l]seowi 

— ■ PPC 

Details to be announced. Call 



nff 



?!«•• 



miU^ BUZARD 



For A1200 Only 
175Mhz PPC 603e & SCS!-2 

with SOMHz 68030 £ 345 

without 50Mhz 030 E 305 

200Mhz PPC 603e+ & SCSI-2 

with 68060, 50MHz E 649 

with 68040, 40MHz £ 479 
with 68040, 25MHz £ 449 
No 68k Series CPU £ 399 



?4-Bit Graphics Card 



Foi- A1 500/2000/3000(T)/4000(T) 
CYBERVISION 64/3D £ 149 
CV 64/3D Scandoubler £ 65 
CV 64/3D MPEG Decoder £ 11 9 



Phone 
nmsao 



01920 
822 302 



White_Kntght_Tech 
©CompuServe. Com 

hJext Day tJeiivery From Just E 5.00 



□n Credit cards, 
Not Switch / 0«l<a 



All Prices Include VAT @ 17.5% 



hdrCi uitvGiy [o.b j Liaife 



SCSI-2 & ULTRA 



I ^9 D ^^^H^ff B^^HMHi I 



AMIGA" COeS POWWRf^" 1 



1.2Gb 
2.1Gb 
3.2Gb 
4.1Gb 
4.2Gb 
4.3Gb 
4.5Gb 
9.1Gb 
9.1Gb 



SCSI 
SCSI- 
SCf| 
SC-Fi- 
SCpl 
S>3I 
£*.SI 
SCSI 
SCSI 



2 Quanti;fn 

2 Seagate 

2 Quantum 

2 Micropolis 

■2 IBM 

■2 various 

■2 Micfopolis 

■2 IBM 

'2 Micropoiis 



£199 
£249 
£309 
£569 
£529 
£399 
£619 
£999 
£1029 



I 



Hard Drives (3.5") Bare 

E-!DE - For Amiga 4000 

These drives are NOT suitable tor A1 200 



1.2GbE-IDE 


/ 


E 145 


1.6Gb E-IDE 


£159 


2.1Gb E-IDE 


£ 175 


2.5Gb E-IDE 


/ 


£195 


3.1Gb E-IDE 


A. 


£215 


4.0Gb E-IDE 




£275 



Genlocks 

LOLA 2000 SVHS & VHS £ 349 
LOLA 1 500 VHS Only £179 



CiiOGti?CC£l3''Cl?Ct(^i 




Hard Drives (2.5") Bare 
E-IDE - For Amiga 1200 



I 



1.0Gb E-IDE Lo»irPrlM £165 

1.4Gb E-IDE £179 

2.1Gb E-IDE £289 

Cable, S/W & Screws £ 9 
Only when purchasing drive !! 



CDROM 

Internal Fitti 
8 X Speed 
12 X Speed 
SCSI-2 CD 
8 X Speed 
12 X Speed 
16 X Speed 



Drives (Bare) 

ng- NOT for A1 200 
SCSI-2 £119 
SCSI-2 £139 

Writers f™ £ 299 
ATAP I/IDE £ 79 
ATAP I/IDE £ 89 
ATARI/IDE £ 99 



Cartridge Drives (SCSI) 

ZIP 100Mb Ext. * Cable STem £ 149 
Zl P 1 0OM b NEW Internal £ 1 49 
ZIP Disks {Now X 6) £ 79 

JAZ 1Gb Ext. <■ Cable & Term £ 399 
JAZ 1Gb Internal 3.5" uerslon £349 

JAZ Disks (X 3) £ 249 

DAT Drives (SCSI-2) 

2G b H P Inlertwl * Fitting Kit £ 499 

2/4G b H P internal + Fitting Kit £ 549 

4/8G b H P Internal + Fitting Kit £749 

Mvw Lower Piic^ 

Memory SIMMS 

4Mb, 72 pin, 70ns £ 25 

8Mb, 72 pin, 70ns £ 40 

16Mb, 72 pin, 60ns £ 70 

32Mb, 72 pin, 60ns £120 



SIRIUS SVHS & VHS 

Plus Audio & Ctiroma Key. 

Software control. £699 
NEPTUN AsSirius, but without 
audio & Chroma Keyer. N*" £529 

Fax / Modems 

28.8K Externa! £ 59 

33.6K External £ 99 

56.6K USR Sportster £219 

Networking 

AMIGANET Ethernet £175 
ARIADNE Ethernet £179 
Amiga 1200 Ethernet £149 

Monitors 

17"Microvitec 1701 £399 

14"Microvitec 1438S £219 

17" Hi-Res SVGA £439 

15" Hi-Res SVGA £199 

14" Hi-Res SVGA £165 

Amiga Software 

SCALAIyltw!400 £199 

SCALA l^l\iJ200 PC Version £199 
ART EFFECT 2 £149 

I^AIN ACTOR BROADCAST £ 169 
AI\/IIBACK 2 Bacltup S/W £ 39 

CLAR I SSA P rofessional V3 £ 1 79 
ADORAGE V2.5 £ 1 09 

MONUI^ENT DESIGNER V3 £ 239 
IVIONUMENT CREATIVE CD £ 69 
ANIIVIAGE VI £ 99 

ADORAGE MAGIC lyiovieshcp £ 69 
ADORAGE lylAGIC Casatjianca £ 69 

Miscellaneous H/W 

PICASSO IV 24-Btt Graphics 
Card with Flicker Fixer £ 289 



Specifications ? 

If you need technical details 

on any of our products, call on 

01920 822 321 

We Still Support The 

AMIGA 

Farewell Amiga Computing ... 
Look Out For Our Adverts In 
CU AMIGA MAGAZINE 
From now on 



Always call first to verify price 
& availablility before placing an order, 
fvlany prices sitbject to exctiange rate 
ES E ■ ?1,n7.-97 



Guildhall Leisure Services Ltd 



PROUDLY PRESENT. 




Sensible Golf Cannon Fodder 2 



Dune 2 



Cannon Fodder 



Overlord 



Available from Electronics Boutique, GAME & all good independents. 



E-Mail: guildhall@glsukok.derDon.cQ.uk Web Site: http://wwwglsukok,defn on.co.uk 
FIND OUT MORE A&ouT OTHER Tm£5 IN THE GUiLCHALL RANGE. CALL OUR infoune NOW ON: 039 1 227JS5 CzWs charged at 50p per minucs at all dmes. 



O think it is a sad reflection on the 
current Amiga scene that so 
much time and effort is being 
put into developing these Inter- 
net tools. I forgive the mad dash for an 
Amiga browser, that is as about as exciting 
as the Internet gets but really, a news 
reader? 

In reality there are only three real reasons 
people use newsgroups. Firstly to get dirty 
pictures, the best way to get people to reg- 
ister a news reader is not to allow them 
access to the alt groups, as discovered by 
the writer of fvlewsAgent. The second reason 
is to allow small minded people to argue 
with each other over the most trivial of 
points. 1 wouldn't mind but most of the peo- 
ple that inhabit newsgroups cannot even 
put together a coherent argument, never 
mind respond correctly to one, 

The final reason is quite a respectable 
one, to get information or answers to a 
question. As newsgroups are an open 
forum, however, one of the lovely people 
from group two could always jump in. If they 
do, just ignore them, think of them as that 
drunk on the bus. 

This review is of New York, a new Class- 
Act based newsgroup reader. I would expect 
most people to be using either Tin, 
NewsAgent or a combination of the two for 
their news browsing pleasure. Together they 
do make a good combination, Tin for off-line 
reading and NewsAgent for batch down- 
loading or on-line browsing. 

Batch downloading is an important ability 
for a news reader as it allows dial up users 
to log on, get all the messages they are 
interested in, log off and then read the 
downloaded articles. This obviously saves 
time being on-line, as you can then take 
your time reading and replying to articles 
while off-line. 

So New York does have a bit of competi- 
tion to contend with. From the start you can 
tell this is not an off-line reader as you have 
to have to be on-line before it will run, bit of 
a give away that. 

In use as an on-line reader, the current 
version of New York does a reasonable job. 
You can subscribe to groups added either 



What the hell, I can mention 
the Spice Girls if I want, it's the 
last issue. 1 like Victoria I do 




from a downloaded groups list or a group's 
name entered by your good self. You can 
then get a list of subject headers and, from 
there, read and reply to postings, or if it is a 
binary uuencoded file the file will be 
decoded to the New York directory. 

If you can be bothered. New York will 
download a complete newsgroup list. While 
this can be helpful to track down some of 
the more unusual groups, it will take at least 
15 minutes as there are tens of thousands of 
groups, and even the file containing their 
group headings is over a megabyte. 

Once you have the list. New York does 
makes a good job of displaying it. Using a 
cascading style list, groups under the same 
heading are grouped in collapsible folders, 
much the same as Mac list views. 

New Agent works alright as an on-line 
reader, but really I am not very keen on the 
single interface. The view for the groups and 
subject headers is far too small and you 
cannot resize it, either through the interface 
or via the prefer- 
ences, but a separate 
window would be 
best. 



I 



mmsu 



5>*«i 



Tfrw lfr/«« 

I r#w«*MV sjnde cntcfn ■^m'tr-} 



SC, yes Iajr«t4± CKStxowV!) 



l^MMMMIHMMM 






iNM w«r» »«?•*. ■'i'-. 



n^Awj. 



■■y«n/YyqL5< Q-.*" tyi-eKoa tatp»q *■; 



I ^announce 

_j ctstacoTiri 
J effiAatiOO* 

_fhanivire 
Ijintfooucwfi 




The lack of any batch downloading and 
off-iine reading abilities is a shame and is 
something that does need addressing. If it 
comes to spending 10 minutes download- 
ing files or spending an hour on-line, I think 
you may go for the first option. 

What annoyed me about this news read- 
ers is its handling of multiple parts binaries. 
I have yet to see a browser that makes a 
good job of collecting these parts together, 
or generally automates the downloading 
and decoding of the parts, but then that is a 
general fault of most news readers and not 
just New York. 

So, New York, this is version one so there 
is a long way to go. To be honest, adding the 
simple batch downloading of NewsAgent 
would make a big difference. 

Bottom 



New York's afn^te interface makes its easy to navi- 
gate but a little harder to flip throught the subjects 



Flipping through news groups 
has never been so easy 





Product details 


Product 


New York 


Supplier 


Finale Development 


Price 


S35 


E-Mail: 


lnfo@Finale-Dev.com 


WWW: 


www.Finale-Dev.com/ 


Scores 


Ease of use 


90% 


Implementation 6(W» 


Value For Money 65* 


Overall 


70% 



Amica Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



Oast month I was going a little 
crazy over ArtEffect. From the 
qu\ck look at the preview it 
seemed pretty incredible, but 
now I have managed to have a good old dig 
around and get a proper idea of just how 
good, or bad, ArtEffect 2 really is. 

Version 2 adds a couple of very important 
new features. Firstly it has internal virtual 
memory, essentially this should allow you to 
work on images of any size. Unfortunately 
this does not work quite so well in practice 
for ACA users, as there still are chip RAM lim- 
itations - limiting you to around 800x600 
pixels. The second new part is layers, but you 
should read the box out to learn more about 
them. 

One part of ArtEffect that needs work is 
the way selections are handled. Currently, 
selections (and also layers) are very much 
static - in no way can you move them. It is 
always useful to be able to 'nudge' selec- 
tions, particularly when superimposing lay- 
ers, as you are never happy with the first 
position. 

True enough you can go through the 
brush manager to pick up a selection as a 
brush and then position it that way. This does 
work very well, but seems an odd way of 



line 



Requirements 

RED i:V,i:liU'll BLACK ((-l.'jlullii:l:ili'S 



3 Mb 



16Mb 



Hard drive 



jOMb Hard drive 




RTG card 040 CPU 



Product 


ArtEffect 2 


Sufiplier 


Blittersoft 


Price 


ArtEffect 1.5: £59.95 
ArtEffect 2: £119.95 


Tel 


01908 261 466 


E-Mail 


sales@blittersoft.com 


WWW 


www.blittersoft.com 







Scores 


Ease of use 


90% 


Implementation 


80% 


Value For Money 


85% 


Overall 


85% 




going about it. In my humble opinion, a 
move tool would do the job much better - it 
works for Photoshop. 

If you take my layer tutorial for example. 
Once you have slapped down the flower 
image it is pretty much stuck in place (unless 
you are prepared to cut the image back off 
the layer and reposition it). If you coufd copy 



Some bloke called 
Nei! reviews 
ArtEffect 2 

over the selection and move it around every- 
thing would be so much easier. 

Vou may have noticed that my enthusiasm 
for ArtEffect has subsided a little as some of 
the limitations become evident. ArtEffect has 
a lot of potential, all the right elements are in 
place, it just needs a little more spit and pol- 
ish before it is a first class program. 



Everyone seems to be comparing ArtEffect with Photoshop, which Is fair enough and, with the addition of 
layers, the likeness will tie even more obvious. It's one thing to say ArtEffect is like Photoshop, but is it as 
good as Photoshop?. 

Sure, the interface is court-inducingly dose to Photoshop's, so it has the look, but has Haarge and Part- 
ner re-created the feel of Photoshop? The best way to find out is to try and reproduce a picture done with 
Photoshop. 

I fiave used one of the more advanced tutorials from the Pftotoshop J manual that involves knocking 
together a picture using a few layers and makes full use of the program's selection and drawing tools. 

The actual project is to be made up of a number of separate images from the Photoshop CD. Originally 
most of the Images had transparent backgrounds but, as these can only be used in Photoshop, they had to 
change to flat Jpegs which makes using them a little more complicated. 

' from a picture and mask them out As the flower is 
generally red on a green background, by using the 
t dropper tool, you can select a range of greens from 

. dark to light and mask out the background 



Product details! & 




PARTI 

Well, here we are at the start of the tutorial, t have all 
the pictures on hand (four in all) and I have the Pho- 
toshop tutorial in front of me. Initially, the picture that 
is going to be the background is loaded and a new 
layer can be added to the picture in preparation for the 
flower image that will be the first to be overlaid. 

Next I load the flower picture. The first task is to cut 
out the flower from its green background. Like Photo- 
shop, ArtEffect offers a number of selection tools, for 
this task the colour selection tool is chosen. This allows 
you to choose specific or general ranges of colours 



PART 2 

when it came 
to transferring a 
selection from 
one image to 
another, I ran 
info a little i 
pfobfem. -*- "' 

feet ; 

refused to co 
the selected ai 







ipboard, it just said it 



could not. The only way to get tiie selection is to 
grab it as a brush and transfer it to the main pic- 
ture. 

This applied to every picture I had to add, as you can 
see with the next sun image. Load in the pictures, use 
the magic wand selection to remove the white back- 
ground, grab the unselected sun area as a brush and 
then paint this onto a new layer underneath the flower 
picture, but still over the main background image 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



El 


ap?*"" -^ 


^1 


^ 


« 






ij -^*' J 




i ii 


Mw^Z^Zrr" ' 


\ _,.a„ I,. ,>T* J 


_...j 





RT3 ^^B^^^^^H 

What's all this about then? Weil an interest- 
ing point is that ArtEffect still uses what 
looks like the normal IFF-ILBM to save its 
layered pictures. This means a program 
such as FastView can still view the back- 
ground image, but the other layers are 
stored in the file as a new alpha block that 
are simply ignored by programs that do not 
recognise them, very neat but then the IFF 
file format is very neat. 

One other point - if you notice in the layer 
window the opacity cf the sun layer has been set 
to 50 per cent, this allows you to make the layer 
more or less see through. If you look at the times 
irv the top right of the screen grabs, you will pro! 
abiy notice that it took me the best part of a d 
to do - ifs all the ruddy interruptions i get all d< 




,2=as?i.sj.^t^ 



PART4 

The next step is to add the leaf to the pic- 
ture, so you just add a new layer, right? Well 
in Photoshop, yes, but in ArtEffect no. ArtEf- 
fect can currently only handle a maximum 
of three layers, which seems a touch limit- 
ing if you ask me. So before the leaf can be 
added, a layer had to be freed up, this 
requires us to merge the flower and sun lay- 
ers. Very straightforward, just drag the sun 
layer to the flower layer in the layers win- 
dow. 

Now the third new layer can be made - the 
usual shenanigans of cutting out the leaf and 
adding it to the new layer. In Photoshop the leaf 
would still be a selection you could rotate, but 
with ArtEffect everything has to be handled as a 
brush, but this works pretty well. The white out- 
line of the leaf is my fault, 1 should have 
expanded the selection by a pixel or two to get 
rid of it, ho hum 



PARTS 

In this part a couple of things are going on. 
Firstly, if you take a look at the layers win- 
dow, you will see that I have hidden the 
flower/sun layer, this means any further 
changes will only affect the leaf and back- 
ground images. You do this by simply click- 
ing on the light bulb icon. 

The second thing going on is that currently the 
only effect that can be applied between layers is 
the opacity, in Photoshop a much larger number 
of operations can be performed. So if you want 
some sort of image processing performed 
between images on different layers you have to 
do it all by hand. Using the magic wand and 
selection tool made it easy to single out the over- 
laying leaves 



PART7 

The final step. This involves adding the year 
to the bottom of the pictures and applying 
a white to transparent gradient to the text. 
Sounds simple enough - click text tool, 
choose CGTriumvirate sized 95 and bold for 
extra thickness, drag the new text into posi- 
tion and press space to fix the text to the 
new layer. So far so good, now for the gra- 
dient 

This is where a problem cropped up, how do 
I do a gradient? Now it is probably my own fault 
for not looking hard enough, but to set up a gra- 
dient you first open the colour manager select 
range, drag and drop the colours you want in the 
range. Go to the fill tool, switch to graduate, click 
where you want the gradient to go and then 
select the gradient direction. Transparent gradi- 
ents do not seem to be possible, so a white to 
black range had to suffice. 




To help highlight the flower from the rest of 
the picture, a drop shadow needs to be 
added underneath it Now in Photoshop 
this is a piece of cake, or pie, if you're Russ- 
ian (watch 2010, or read the book ifs bet- 
ter). With Photoshop everything is on its 
own layer, you can easily grab the flower's 
outline as a selection, paint it black on a 
new layer, blur it, merge the shadow and 
flower layers and Bob's your father's 
brother. 

With ArtEffect all this has to be performed as 
a separate project then copy the shadow image 
as a brush to the new middle layer, sony I 
merged the leaf and background layers to free 
the third layer up. Oddly,, filters did not seem to 
work on the layers, only the background base 
layer. This meant the blur had to be performed in 
a separate project, not a good feature 



PAR 

The finished picture, the ArtEffect version is 
on the left and the original Photoshop one 
is on the right, if you hadn't guessed. To 
start with the white outline around the leaf 
Is my fault and wouldn't be there if I did this 
again. 

Due to ArtEffects limitation on moving layers 
and selections, the position of the leaf and sun 
are wrong and to move them afterwards is very 
difficult The last major problem is the text, firstly 
it is not anti-aliased, giving the jagged outline 
and also no transparency could be applied. 

So the main problems encountered are due to 
the poor selection handling and the current lim- 
itations o( the layer system. Remember that this 
was my first attempt to do something substantial 
with ArtEffect If I had another attempt the fin- 
ished product would match the Photoshop ver- 
sion much better, save for the text transparency 





l^d* 



)y iV^b 



Amica Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



KEW=II 



SOKIVVARK 



I Ksl. ItSI 



THE BEST (JUAl.lTV PE) & StLAREWARE 

The LEADER - 
OTHERS CAN ONLY FOI.I.OW! 



FRKK FHlESni.V llliLP BY 

rosi .ir I'Hdm: anvtimk; 

FRKi: ( i.L 11 M^■^rl1^^:K.sHlP 

I'lCK VOIR o"N pk(k;r,\m.s: 

BV -NAME NL'MBKK AND SIZE! 

ITS easy; 

5W)k mukt~> 1 booialile disk: 
SOOk makc-i 1 noR-honlable disk! 



(REELY UPDATED C AIAI.OGLT 

WITH FULL DKSCRin IONS 

INDEX & VIRUS UHELKKR ONLY £1! 

Phont for (hi- LAFI-S r PK0(;R.\MS; 

4 ur rnorr 

OVLV n.i=-'. 



ro Kox 672 

Siiuth Cr(»tl<m 

Surrey CR2 9YS 

Td: (n"si-f.57 1617 



CHROiMil 

Ovaffvs Home CompuUng 



Genlocks • Accessories 

Printers • Monitors • Speakers 

Complete Amiga/PC Systems 

Support Services • Books 

File Conversion/Photo scon 

Multimedia • Design • Video 



01328 862693 

email - (hronianel@aol.com 

web - hltp://n]einbers,a0Uom/cKroinan« 

Wi)j free soflwore, ifoz, info news & Us 



Tel 01257 400097 Fax 01342 4S7928 



T.p)/ 



Feir- di FREE catalogue of the laxctt and bvic in AmiEa fubtic Domam loftv 
lond iri yciiJt^ nan\t! & addr^n anii a Jooie txamp 

PD prices; 1-10 BOp; I 1-20 70p; 2l+......60p 

Post^En: & PAcItlma i* fcee on all PD order* — Local ordera qualify for free delivery 
Ail uj-.frr-s nrr serX f.r.-;[ C!tJS% orpd «r- n•^iY tjsr .rirw TDK/fujj disks 



IJ.I.IJM.I.lUII.IJ .IJ4,IIH.Ii.lllJJL.Il.J.HilJ.l.lJ.IIHliUmWliL'MJJ^.M.m 



(Dcpt AC), 79 WoodnDok Road, Apple/ BridKcWigan, Lines VVN6 9JR 



SifiS weieame any enquiries from new ond experienced Amiga users alike 



S&SPD 



icSI 



Fi«£:£ PD SOFTWARE 



lUflj AMIGA - PC - All Commodore 
^^^ Call (0181) 651 5436 or 

Write to 45 Brookscroft, Linton Glade, Croydon CRO 9NA 
www.icpug.org.uk 
Independent Computer Products Users Group 



THE BEST AMIGA USER GROUP IS 15 YEARS OLDtlll 



To celebrate CNc Computer Ctub is now offering affla2ing half Drice subscription to its unbeatabfe User 

Group Service. Members gel great tiiscount offers, ttiousatids of new contacts, free fiefp 4 advice, gigabytes 

of tree PD/Sliareware from our exclusive ESS. Regular nciisletter. Second-hand hardivare, service. Plus: 

Now also FREE Inlemet Home Page anri E-Mail address, and FREE advertising on our Inlemel site. 

Plus Full Internet Connection for LESS THAN £1.00 per month!!!! 

PreUsed 3.5" DS/DD Disks just Tp each (-r-p&p) 

Rnd out wtial you're missir-a by sending an SAE 'cr our FREE intro pack to: 



C.C.C. (ACia), P.O. Box 121. Gerranis Crass. Buete. SIB 9JP. (01753) 884473 



We alsoaner groups lor ISM/Apple/Aian'S Bils'Uonsoles l-anlasy bbl ri (jarrers ana Msgi Mu: 
Trade and Qgalflr enquiries we'come. Web Pai:^ al HTTPyV'wA-w.uk-main. cam-chic 



CLASSIC AMIGA PD 
software 



FULL RANGE OF PD SOFTWARE CD-ROIVl, CD32 AND 

ACCESSORIES At^lGA GAtiflES AT SPECIAL PRICES 

PHONE FOR FflEE CATALOGUE DISK 

0161 723 1638 



Open 12-9pni 7 Days 



DISK 

Arc V^u findins H harcl to get xoftware 
far your Amisa? Well help is at hand* 

We dr4 naw In our siHth year o1 
supphrins Amic|a public damAin/thartt- 

warc and have no intention of itopptng. 

So why fiot clJ.tii vOLif FHEE -iritjlogue, li^Hrig All 

our KcJci by sf namg an SAf to: 

PATHFINDER PX) [AMC), 

*1 Monon street. Bmglcv, West Yoitahirc BD16 HNQ 

Tclfe* 01274 ^&590S. 

Emoih SalesEpathpd'ClerTTon. co.uk 

Wet: site tittp 'wv.^vpflthpd.demCin.CO.uk 

JUST CHECK OUT OUR PRICESI 

100 Disk Labels £.1*5; Mous* Mat i.^-99 

Diik Dtive CIcflfilFig KIE £5-50 

Have you also 30I a PC? Tfien vvf»y not lend for 

our UAf pachogc? It comairra WnMiQv^ 95 and 

Dns versions at Uie Amiga emulator (of the PC 

plU5 icmc Amiqo progrflms to g«t yoii SDing - 

OHLY£3 {juppiied en PC HD djsks - Attess. to 

an Arniga rcQuiredj 
Pcrit A Patking for orders undcf £6 isjjst 6Qp 
and PRiE [Of otideri over £6 



COMPUTER SYSTEMS 
& SERVICES 

Amiga a PC Specialists 

We otier a wide ranoe of Amina A PC SErvir:e5 

Amiga PD - over 6000 PD TiHes - Prices 

75p per disk + 50 PaP - Int Floppy S, PSU repairs. 

Business Card. Leaflet & Piesentation Design & 

Priming Service, plus many other Services. 

For tree Catalogue Disk & Inlormalion. CALL 

Computer Systems & Services 

t6 Eliiabelti House. Durliam Ave. Gidea Paik, 

Romtord. Essei Rffl2 BJD 

CALL 0976 232 939 



Please make Cheques & Postal Orders payable to 
U. J. Bixtiv 

PC & APPLE MAC SERVICES 

We also provide PC - Repair - Upgrade & 

Custom Building Service, tor all you PC butts tor 

more intormation CALL 

Louise Q170S709t5t, PC ONLY 

Angle Mac Services CALL 0850 585 337 



PRICe OVER-RID6. We cant be beaten on price by a FULL £ 5 

' r uihe prodwcl you V - — ' — ■■■-.-..-.-■..-■ .-i ...:.;..._ , — _. _j. 



we SUARANT66 YOUR TOTAL SATISFACTION - OH ALL YOUR MONEY BACK 



THE^^E TAFIK 

TO I AL FOOTBALL J^j- 

IRIVPALf=Ufl5L;;T IHUI^il 



A500 Software 

..\i\ji\) . HARO DRIVE RLQLJIRED 

BI.'fLYSNQPOflTPESS - , .1499 urO ENEMy UNKNOWN 

0IG IDOt 100 GAMES) SW WEM&tEV ■ RUJBr LEAGUE 

CAMfflONFODDEB tO.W WtNG COMWaMOER - 

CANNONFO0DER2 13.99 WOROWORTHVUSE 

CENTiflFOLD SQUARES 399 WORMS 1 

CHAOS£NGINE2 92^ 10.49 XP8 „. ,^ .„ i 

COLONIZATION 13.» ZEEWOLFS 

CCXOSSUS CHESS X 4,9& a A f^r\I\ O^H^..^.^^ 

COVK? GIRL STRIP POKER , , ,99^ Al 2UlJ bOTtWare 

CRlChETCAPTAlhi 3.K 

CRICKET COLLECTIOH VOL t 
1NTERKATIDNAL ONE DAV CRiCKET, 
TESTMATCH CRICKET, BAHLE FOR 
THE ASHES B.48 



■.- ^-j M"j; JI-ACF.R WINK M9? 

Lijj Theme ii::;5FnAL tiT'-^ 28,99 

13,59 X-V/INGVS Tl£ FIGilTEB V;iri^^ .MM 

IS PLAYSTATION 

17.99 



TOP 10 



ACIQ ATTACK COMPILATION 
SUPER SKIDMARKS 



, AUENBREEOaO 

AllENenEEDaD£«r>C 

CRCKET MASTERS , JJW CKAOS ENGINE 2 

DAILV DOUBLE MORSE RACll+G 3» COLONIZATtQH ,„„..„ 

DELUKEPAiNTJ 4,99 FEARS 



DIE HARD TRILCWY W^ 36.99 

EXHUMED 26.39 

FADE TO EUACK 9(r. _ 17 99 

INTL SUPERSTAR SOCCER PRO W-M 

M;CR0M;!>CHIHES3!MS 29 sg 

RAGE BACEfl .. 
14,99 SaUL BLADE 

SVNU-.CATE WARS 
TOWa RAIDER 9S^ 

■'^^ N64TOP10 

...11,99 BiASTCOaPi 

-...a.K FIFASOCCEfl 

__.21.-ra Wn. SUPERSTAR SOCCER M 

...5.99 (aU£HIINST»CT GOLD 



B^>3 ; 




SPECIAL RESERVE 

MEMBERSHIP GIVES YOU 
10 ISSUES OF THE SPECIAL 
RESERVE CLUB MAGAZINE 

Oiir 48 pjgp lull colour magazine, wilh 
nws. levie^vs and Itiotjsarcfs of products 



ALL OF THIS 

FREE 




1 1 « FIELDS OF GLOnV 

.,9?9 ClOOiA „ 

1149 GLOOM DELUXE „. 

12 99 GUARDIAN 

.12 99 LEGENDS _1239 IWlfllOKAHT64 ... 

.13.99 MINSKtESFjRBALLS ... 10.99 FU.aTW»*GS 6480% 

,999 PINBALL PRELUDE 1T.«9 SHAOOWSOFT»CEUPIRE9Cr. 

t3*H PREMIER MANAGER J 5.39 SUPER MJWWW 100% 

MM ROADKtLL SW TUftOK ■ DWO&MJH HUWTER 97". 

13 99 SIMON THE SORCERER 15 fl9 WAVE RACE M 57% 
SLUJTH.T 19 J9 
SPEBtSLEGACY 1599 
THEME PARK 



SATURN TOP 10 



'* ™ DARK SAVIOUR 
Z,„ FIGHTERS UEG-yjIX 



DESERT STftIKE 

DOGFIGHT 

DUNE 

DUNE E ■ BATTLE FOR ARRAKIS 
EURO LEAGUE MAMAOER ZMB 

Fl MASTERS 

F1I7A NIGHT KAWH .. 

F15 STRIKE EAGLE II 
F19STEALTHFIGHTER 
FIELCE OF GLORY 

FOOTSAU. COLLECTION VOL 1 

CLUB FOOTBALL CLUB ANO COUNTRY. 

WEMBLEY INTL SOCCER,, «.« upQ . eneMY uNHNO\VN . 

FOOT9AU DIRECTOR 2 ... - 4.» WOROWORTH tffi 

FOOTBALL GLORY .4J9 WOfifcK ■ THE DIRECTORS CUT 

^Sr^"^^.:::--:::::::^ A1200 design pack |gs^ 

M1GR3FREWCH(B TO ADULT] ..,.22l» SSnagER OSCA^^ 
MICR:jaERMAN(flTOAtWLT^ KM MANAGER. OSCAR* DENNIS 

WICR3 MATHS (ll-l 22 99 PRIQ C^Atnati. 

MINS-(iESFURBALLS lOW \s\JO£ UialllCfS 

ODYSSEY 8,99 ACI& ATTACK COy PI LATION 

PGATOURGOLi; 9« qUARDIAN. RCAOKIU. 

PIKBALL DREAMS HW SUPER SKIOMARKS 

PiNBALt FANTASIES I3.M .__™, _, -^ y-, , 

I^AILBOAD TVCOW 12.« «ISr*r.^*iL^^.! 

REACH FOB THE SHIES 

PL,'Gev COACH .^m arcade pool 

SENSIBLE GOLF J2.99 FIELDS CT GLORY 

SENSIBLE WORLD OF SOCCER 9&97 IB 99 ROAD KILL - 

SENSIBLE WORLD OF SOCCER SPEEDBALL 2 ^ 

DATA DISK 96fl7 ■ 9« 5PEBIS LEGACY ™ «... 

SETTLERS 13» 

SILENT service: 13.» PC CD TOP 1 

SIMON THE SORCERER 12-« r\^ \tiJ I KJr IW 

SPECIAL FOflCES a.« AMHSA EMULATOR 

STAPLORD 9.99 CARMAGEDDON (RATED 15) .. 

e.m.<, oArif COU^fTERSTH KE • RED ALERT SPECIAL RESERVE BOOK 

l^PFR?!iDMARKS SUPER TENNIS DATACD iREGUtRES RED Al^RT> !2-^ OF 1001 CHEATS I,&9 

SUPER SKIDMARKS. SUPtH Tfci^iNi^ DIABLO FOR WIHDOWS K PENT ...29.95 

•'" DaWGEOW KEEPER 23.99 UFO (XCCUl STRATEGIES 

12 49 IWPERILIM GALACTiCA 2-9 95 AND SECRETS . 13 .l^i 



lOgg LEGENDS, FEARS. GLOOM 1M9 

700 INDIANA JONES AND FATE OF 

s'gg ATLANTIS HIMT GUIDE 399 

'am more C-' for DUMMIES 
liaW PLAYSTATION SECRETE, 

STBATEGES AND SOLUTIONS 16,» 

SECSEIS OF FRONTIER eUTE ? 
i^M SECRETS OF SIMCITY 2000 9W 



SUPER LEAGUE I/ANAGEfi 

SUPER SKIDMARKS 




Buy any one jt&m from our entire catalogue at Iht ^ame 
time as joir\irig lor a year (E7.50) or more and well give you 

jA FREE COPY OF EDGE MAGAZINE 

The luluie Ol iniefachi/o enionnmrnent magajline 

Iwoiih £3 SO. FREE 10 riew membeis 

AHD 

THE SPECIAL RESERVE 

BOOK OF 1001 CHEATS 

Ctieau lof games on most console 

and compuief piattofms 

AM» all Dt these fantastic gifts t>elow absolutely free. 
FREE AMIGA 
MEMBERSHIP PACK 
Zeewolf 1 & 2, Football Glory 
and Quickjoy footpedaJs 

All OFFERS Z!iJ5,'tCI TOSiTl-r.-. 
OTHER OFFERS ARE AVAILABLE 
OVERSEASMEMBERS PLEASE ADD ' 





THeHffPAfiK92%. 

V»HTlJAfKlHT^2 9e^ .. 
9.99 '.VORLOVflDE SOCCER 9i■94^ 

BOOKS 

A//E50ME SNES SECRETS 3 



, DUNGEON MASTER HINT BOOK 3.99 



CONTROLLERS 

laUtCKSHOT 1J7F 

] PYTHON 11.» 

,'ITH AUTOFlRr 



m 



AMIGA PARTS 

COMMOUOflE 
AMIGA POWER 
SUPPLY 27.99 



LOGIC 3 JOYPAD 
AUTOnpe 



^ 



EXTERNAL DISK DRIVE 
FOR AMIGA OR SX-I 
37 ■ft^ 



/ 



ALFA UECAHOUSE 
OOO 13.99 

■".«]Dfi.:;(JuT7ons 
LEADS 

JOYSTICK KKTENOER CABLE 
(3.METERS1 . T.» 

JOYSTICK SPLITTER CABLE T.» 
UONITOR LEAD 

AMiGATOCMBOlOR lOEMS 10.99 
HULL MODEM CABLE 

|?5 PIN 1.8 METRES) 1(I,0B 

SC&RT LEAD 

AMIGA TO SCART TV .10.99 

SCART LEAD 
j C032 TO SCART TV . logg 



SMALL COMPACT CESGN. 
COMPLETE WITH CABLES. 
INTERNET BUNDLE AriD FREE 
STAR1ER GUIDE 



29.9i 

INTERNAL DISK DRIVE 
FOR A130Q/AG0O 39.99 

FOR A500 38,99 

ITOMBZ.S' INT HARD DRIVE 7B.9B 



Over 300,000 



Spetlal Reserve. 
The biggest games 
[tub In the World. 

Eil>blbhi4 10 iii'i. Sp«lDl 
Itel l»dci 



[NINTCWPO &4 £139.9? IniluJina mnlralkr PLft YST ATIOH £121 .99 inilujw ninlTiillcr .nii ll™» I (D 0% 



FINANCE AVAILABLE on i.lrcud 'uiitimM gnd i<t4 dtoU 



0| 

I 91 



special ( 
Reserve 

: \i\K&) ttttp;// 
specirtLresefVE.co. I4k_ 



^**^'=^ 



Special Reserve 

01279 600204 



W* onty auppty rr»eml»r« bol yOw c" omer »» you [oln 

Trial Membefship only 50p 
Annuo! Membership (UK) £6.00 

ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP FEES UKCE<0O ECnOOO WORLD E12.DD 

Mvmbm r«««y« t(*i iLua* dI Uw itolBur eIjB inaqktKi* ptt ^tir h fifl» copK 

al EIX^E. EhMk^af lOCI Clwili ArKl.icnDka FREE gili-wntii ycvbuy my itscn 

tft Y^^ ^^^'^ Tlwffl li- no ablig^tcr lo tiu> ifhyiri"^ 



•»i|« \~ 



rur OPTIONAL l'>«t c!fl»» poat »«« SOp pw Inm 
Fof O^nOKAL rut dakwy on hant»«ra a dd g3 PC 

AIL PFlCtSI'ICLUOEUPtKlStAGE 1 VAT \c 



|>,f1fft-;g1 Special Reserve dt 

r -~ PO Box 847, Hartow, CM2I 9PH 

Wf. art mainlT mail order bvl wv oIm hor* 

Four impressive 
iS^ B Special Reserve Shops 



B.Nnic.i Arotn- ''!'.. ■■ ■ -' 

OUT B^ SOT 
S^vniWHCwoAirt, HenTs t> 

En.i.«H:>M,.,«M. N.I ^i«,. 
Cll2TfiUU3H 



; CH£iMl'&»C,EHt«i3ti^'>*-Jii*' 
0I2WMI777 

iU,H f -lOkl J2S l> htl . IfcAX If Pl£U H. 

0P£MS.St"l3™ 



• F. 



Wb CUARAHTEE TOTAL SAHSFACTlOw InCvilaBly tome pf^K)l«ts listed 

iriaynotyellMBvattBble. Please pii-jno lotheck sva.lability. Preesmay 

chMngo wrlhDUl pnof ngiMrigalipn SAVE = Saving ftff full iKom-nended 

prk*, Scnl lo pic** 15 7.97 Ertoft & Ornmisloni Esicljcled 

lrl*r.M4dtPlr« L'ti. i>iir Maiilngt, f^niNbtld^bivoim. H«<ns CM21 91^0 



Words of the past, words 
of the present and words 
for the future. Nine years 
of reader letters with 
Amiga Computing 



QssuE 2 July 1 988 




Mistakes 

I enjoyed reading issue one, especially the 
bit about Warl<bencli 1.3. How much is it 
anyway? There was an error in the Plain 
Man's Guide to CLI. the author said that it 
is important to use capital letters. He is 
wrong, it doesn't matter whether you use 
upper or lower case. The Amiga treats it 
the same. 

Now on to the hidden messages. For the 
last message, you omitted to mention that 
you must hold down the function key 
while you eject the Workbench disk and 
replace it with a none Workbench disk. 
Leszek Wolnik-Kurjanowicz, Ealing 

Piracy problem 

I was very interested to read in your first 
issue about the sales of the Amiga catch- 
ing up with those of the ST. I work in a 
shop in London where we sell all kinds of 
computers, and the Amiga runs only to 
Amstrad PCs. But ST software outsells 
Amiga products. I attribute this to the lack 
of really good Amiga games and the huge 
amount of piracy on the Amiga. 



Don't Write in! 

Well thanks for all your letter over the years, most have ■ 

been very complimentary, others have been quite con- 
., structive, while others have been down right abusive, 
I even so brought a wry smile to all our faces. 

f If you have any comments on the Amiga or Gateway 2000 why not send them to 
I : Amiga Doormat as I'm sure Mr Ben Vest will be more than happy to listen to all your 
f gripes, oh yes he will. 



Most of the games are straight ST con- 
versions. If I wanted an ST I'd have bought 
one, but the Amiga has far better graphics 
and sound. Piracy is a serious problem, 
and I implore Amiga owners to buy their 
games and not copy them. 

If you have a stolen game which you 
play a lot, go and buy the original to show 
the software house how much you appre- 
ciate the game. 

This is the only way that software 
houses can be persuaded to carry on sup- 
porting the Amiga. One good thing is the 



bundled software which comes with the 
ST. Every Atari comes with loads, which will 
cut down the number of new games ST 
owners will buy, and so makes the Amiga 
sales look proportionately better, 

Your first issue was great, keep rooting 
for the world's best computer. 
Alex Walsh, Newbury 

This issue an external drive cost £100, an 
A500 cost £400, 512K cost £105 and a 
20Mb hard drive would set you back 
£625 



QssuE 5 October 1988 



Hard discount 

At last a top quality magazine specifically to support a top quality computer. 
Congratulations on your first two issues, and good luck for the future. 

Why is it that I can buy a 20Mb hard disk for an IBM PC compatible for 
about £200, whereas a similar product for the Amiga costs £500? OK, so I 
know that there are economies of scale and that some components are dif- 
ferent, but the majority of the components must be broadly similar - the 
disk, the controller and so on - but 250 per cent more? 

Now if somebody could develop a cheap (£100?) board that would allow 



an IBM hard disk card to run on an Amiga... 
Martyn de Young, Kent 

Hop to it 

While on holiday this year doing the rounds of the amusement arcades, I , 
could not get my wife away from a game called Frogger. She normally hates ^ 
the arcades but loved Frogger. I own an Amiga 500 computer and was 
wondering if you would know how I could obtain this. 
D P Bowles, London 




ssuE 20 January 1990 




Narrow minded 

why isn't the Amiga better known? I 
bought a modem and was having trouble 
with using a bulletin board. So I asked the 
sysop for help, telling him I was using an 
Amiga 2000. Displaying as much intelli- 
gence as a boiled potato, he asked if that 
was a PC or a modem. 



Of course I explained that the Amiga is 
an advanced 68000 based multi-tasking 
system with graphics and sound proces- 
sors which make the IBM look like a bad 
dream Sir Clive once had. But how do we 
get it through to the people in suits that 
the world of computing is much more 
exciting when you wiggle out of the big 



blue straight jacket? 
Gerry Hall, Antrim. 

This issue an external drive cost £75, an 
A500 cost £290, 512K cost £40, a 20Mb 
hard drive would set you back £300 and 
Commodore launch the A2S00. 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 




ssuE 10 March 1989 




Girls in computing 

I am fed up with the way women are 
treated in computing. I've got a BSc in com- 
puter science and know what I am talking 
about. However when I go into a computer 
shop to ask about Amigas, the sales men 
all talk down to me. I am told how I could 
use Superbase Personal to keep recipes 
and how educational it could be. 

I know these things. What 1 want is 
advice on what compilers are available, 
what the operating system is like and how 
to really get the most from an Amiga. 

In the end I bought a machine from a 
cut price mail order company. I would 
have paid the full price, but only if the 
company offered decent back-up, 
Tanya Al-Rais, Kent 

SSUE 82 
January 
1995 

Art for arts sal<e 

For some time 1 have been growing increas- 
ingly disenchanted with Amiga Computing, 
for a number of reasons: 

The indiscriminate use if irrelevant elec- 
tronic symbols linking text and headings. To 
anyone with the slightest knowledge of 
electronics, the apparent random use of 
symbols such as a battery, a transistor, a 
capacitor or other components when com- 
pletely irrelevant to the text is simply non- 
sense and misleading. 

The typeface generally used for the head- 
ings is also irritating and interrupts smooth 
reading. X and H appear very similar, to 
mention but one detail, and the whole 
affect is most unattractive. Your review of 
PageStream 3 makes me wonder whether I 
am using the same program. When my 
copy arrived a couple of weeks ago it was a 
disaster, to put it mildly, although after two 
updates from the Net it is a little better. 

In addition, the arrival of December issue 
in mid-October seems utterly ridiculous. 

Your review of PageStream 3 makes me 
wonder whether I am using the same pro- 
gram as you are. When my copy arrived a 
couple of weeks ago it was a disaster, to 
put it mildly, although after two updates 
taken from the net it is certainly a little bet- 
ter. 

I have been using PageStream with vari- 
ous updates for some years and have found 
it excellent until version 3, but surely your 
marks in 'the bottom line' are somewhat 
over-enthusiastic to say the least? 
This issue an external drive cost £55, 
an A1200 cost £240, 1Mb cost £20, and 
a 200Mb hard drive would set you 
back £200 



Pircay is not a crime 

Most decent games cost over 20 quid. My 
friends and I get about half that every 
week in pocket money. The only way we 
can afford games is by clubbing together. 
But I'm not going to fork out a fiver 
when my mate Rob gets to take the game 
home and I don't get to play it. So we 
copy it. If we didn't we wouldn't buy the 
games. I don't see why this should be ille- 
gal. 

Starglider shield 

Do 1 detect slight radiation from the planet 
Argonaut in reply to Omar Farooq's query 
{Starglider slug January 1989) as to why 
Starglider II runs slightly slower on the 
Amiga than the ST? 

QssuE 86 May 1995 



If you treat the Amiga like an ST it will 
run slightly slower. It is more sensible to 
treat it like an Amiga. The whole point 
about the blitter is that it will co-process 
with the 68000 if the code is properly 
written. Used in this way it is very much 
faster than native 68000 code at screen 
operations. 

Writing portable code to make life eas- 
ier when you move programs from one 
machine to another makes commercial 
sense, but does not have a profound 
effect on the hardware. 

To put it another way: My neighbour's 
push bike is a hell of a lot faster than my 
XR3, so long as I don't turn the engine on! 
Jim Hawkins, London 



A helping ear! 

I have only been using my Amiga 1200 for 
a year now and have tried reading numer- 
ous magazines. Out of all of them I prefer 
your magazine as it is easy to read and you 
give away some excellent disks. 

However, I have encountered problems 
on two of your disks, Easy Amos and Anim 
Workshop. These, I think, could have been 
cleared up in a matter of minutes but 
instead I have to write in with the problem 
and wait for a reply 

Why don't you have a helpline so you 
could make things easier for everyone? 
This is the only reason I have not sub- 
scribed to your magazine. Please consider 
this... 



Brian Coodfelloiv, Northumberland 
In the past Amiga Computing ran a 
coverdisk helpline as a permanent fea- 
ture. However, over recent months we've 
been running without a full-time 
coverdisk editor and unfortunately, until 
this situation is resolved I'm afraid the 
coverdisk helpline will remain inactive. 

However, when a replacement is 
found, rest assured tlie helpline will 
reactivated, if anyone out there is inter- 
ested in the job feel free to send an 
application. Please mark your letter RE: 
coverdisk editor application. 

Editors note: So I did apply, and 1 got 
the job, and here I am today. Funny old 
world isn't it? 



QssuE 69 January 1994 



Cream crackered 

1 hate cream crackers, I really do. Apart 
from the (act that they always fall apart 
when you try to butter them and they stick 
to the roof of your mouth, their butter- 
smeared flakes are a hell of a job to clean 
r off floppy drives. 

1 hate four year-old sprogs playing with 
my disks even more. "OK son, just leave my 
disks alone or you'll break them. Where's 
the rest of your cream cracker, the bit you 
haven't spread all over my disks?" 

The next day I found the soggy cracker 
when I tried to load a game into my Amiga. 
■ Yep you could say the disk drive was literally 
;, cream crackered. 

The guilty party was confronted with the 
evidence. "But son, why did you do it?' 1 
asked. "Well," came the reply, "it's the same 
shape and it did fit." Huh! "Anything fits if it's 
covered in butter, I muttered." 

Mother acts for the defence: yjeW if you 



won't let your kids play with real disks, what 
else can they play on the Amiga with?" 
Good grief! I really do hate cream crackers. 
Steve Clarl(e, Kempston. 

impossible upgrade 

Will there ever be an upgrade kit for the 
A500 to make it into an A120Q? There was 
the ECS chip set upgrade and Kickstart 2.04 
chip to make it into an A500 plus, so why 
not another jump up the ladder? 

I don't want to get rid of my beloved 
A500 ii I can avoid it, as 1 have too many 
peripherals which use the DMA slot These 
would be useless on the A1200 unless 
someone was to produce an adaptor. Any 
chance of this? 
Calif} McCrain, Aberdeen 
This issue an external drive cost £55, an 
A600 cost £190, SUK cost £20, and a 
200Mb hard drive would set you back 
£300 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



Are you wanting to connect to the Internet? 



1. Comprehensive Software 

AU. rOU N^D TD CONNECT AND SURF 1116 IIVTERNCT 

NetConnecl provides ycu will all ycu need to conneci [o xhe Irnemei - Full TCP stack, web 
browser, mail, news, ftp, ire and telnet clients. You don't need anything else, r.o need to 
worry atwut additional software. The CD version even indifdes pre-configijrec WIME-types 
for web browsing), datatypes, addtticnal online documentation and more! 



-2. 



Licensed 



NO SHAREWARE - FULLY UCeNS€D SOFTWARE 

NelConnecl is a suite if commBrcially licensad Intefnei softivaj-e wtiich means tfiere is no 
need lo register any of the core modules contained within ihe package - no lime limiotions. 
no fiassfe. All Ihe software contained wiihin NetConnect are arguabty Ihe best in ttieir class. 
Ne( Connect coniroEs the modules with a unique floating (or fixed) icon bar (wtircfi can be 
altered and new tcons added to tf^e bar) which rneans everything is just one dick away! 
NetConnect is. of course, fully supported and Ihe modules canlairaed witfiin Net Connect will 
be supported by the authors with minor upgrades, enhancements or bug fixes. 







NetConnect v2 



•- 3. After Sales Support 



THE BEST FRee SUPPORT - 6UARAMTE€D 

We pnde ourselves in offering superb after sales suppon to all ouf NeiConneeVlnternet 
users. We guarantee you will not get better free Internet related suppori from any olhef nval 
company. Support via telephone (Mnn-Fri 10am-5pm). e-mail, mailing Jisl (general 
NetConnBct forum) and the web si;e [www, a niigaworld.com/nelcannect). 
Our aim is lo help users with their Inlemet connection after they have purchased Net 
Connect and we understand thai the Internet can be a daunting experience tor the beginner. 
Issue 2 of our Inlemet magazine 'Initemel Informer" should be available wiihin September. 
This IS a quarterly magazine with the latest information at>oul the Internet ana yourAmiga - 
NetConnect users receive this magazine free of charge! 




STFax Professional 



lavatlalile September] 



£29.95 



STFax Professional is new commercial tax progfam for the Amiga containing the sott of advanced 
fax features you would find within commercial PC fax software. STFax has been in '.he shareware 
for the last lew months, and the brand new commercial "professional" version offers even more 
advanced features plus some voice contra! far voice n^odgms, 

- Support for all modem classes (i, 2. 2.0J 

- Voice control - use your Amiga as a digital answer machine etc! 

- PhonetsoQk (store all your favourite fa^ numbers) 

- Scheduler (store fax messages lo be sent at specified times) 

- Reports 

- ARexK port 

- Datatypes support for Image conversion 

- Printer dhver lo redilrecl all print-outs to a fax file (print trorn Wordwonh, Pagestream etc!) 

- Viewer for viewing outgoing/incoming fax messages 

- Plus many more features 



NelConr>ect v2 is even easier to connect to Ihe 
Internet! Launch the new Wizard GUI, choose 
your modem, enter a few user details and let the 
Wizard do alt the rest for you! Simple, with ver- 
sion 2 you don't even need to vrtjrry about the 
provider - everything is automatic, everything is 
point and click! Amiga Format concluded about 
NetConrioct v1 [June 97 issue): "Almost the per- 
feci package for the Amiga Internet user", 'if you 
need to get online, this is the easiest way to do it" 
and "ll's gcx}d value for money loo - especially the 
hurdle including the 33. 6K modem.' We have lis- 
tened to our NetConnect vl users, noted Uieir 
comments and added some other new features. 
NetConnect v2 is available on CD-rom and floppy 
disk. SpBclfhations include: 
■ New AmITCP - NetConnect v2 users will be the first people to 
USB a version of the new AmiTCP! We have added a number of 
changes to this new version - the main additions are the new 
Wizard, MUl based dialler and 'events' contral. 

- AmITCP Wizard - makes configunng your ISP a doddle. 
Choose your modem, enter some user details and then (he rest 
of the process is completely automatic! This is true 
W^ndowsSS™ style connectivity! See the two example pictures - 
point and click Internet configuration! 

- New programs ■ Netinfo and X-Arc (X-Arc is a brand new 
WmZIP'" style archive management tool. Downloads Iha/lzx 
files fram VoyagBr/AmFTP/Fkillcrodot-llH auto-entracts them into 
X-Arc's GUI and allows you lo control Ihe files 

- Programs aro now kcyfilo based [can be used with any TCP 
stack - Miami etc) 

- Extras pre-configurcd IvtIME types {CD only), datatypes (CO 
Only), online hefp files eic 

- Updated, latest versions of the modules (Voyager. 
Micfodot-H. AmIRC, AmFTP etc) 

- Printed Instalfalionylnitroductlon guide - Install NetConnect 
quickly and easily 

- Printed manual ■ using the Internet and NetConnect 

- Plus many more smallar changos and addJUoti^ 



AMITCP v4.6 DIALUP 

AmITCP \% A rttw lull TCP lUcJt. tnhincid irtd 
d«w«lopad by ui ind NSDI wllh full GUI conlrol! 

VOYAGER'NG 

VcyagAr Htxl Gennr^tlan It jjrcidy pDW«rful 
Milh javascript, IrxmBi. Ubl«i, SSL (htlpl:} etc] 

MICRODOT-ll 

A tuptrb and brand n«iM conimerciBl email and 
nitw9 client. >ald 10 ^« Ih* best far th« Amiga! 

AMFTP 

Thfr Irvditstry sUndird FTPcll^nt ird the nun*. 
boT oru I^TP program on Iha AmJga. 

AMIRC 

Again, the Induslry ttandird Amiga IRC ctlanl - 
said ID bin batttr thai lit PC »nd Mac fivali! 

AMTELNET 

Uiv Am Telnet to malnt2r)n youf weD ±)t«, connect 
to oiit«rnal computvrs, play ontiriB gain*At 

NET INFO 

Netlnro la a naw program by Olivar VUagnac to 
sirarch Itia nal • incvroula. ptng. atrvlCM atc. 



AMTERM 

AmTarm !& a comma program - conmct la ■ 
B&S. iirnd files to yOur trlendt Ami g a/PC /Ma cf 

X-ARC 

Br;ind new DOpuE Ilka archlua managemant tool 
which inlegriles with th« NelCannect pacttagel 




Wizard - Loginscript Recorder 



1^ 


p^-aHiET^ 


m 






.u ^ifjfiffir-yt '"^''MsJii 



Wizard ■ Canliguralion Completed 



High Speed Serial Cards 



from. 



£44.95 




Hypercom 3 



Ttie Hypercom range of high-speed sehai: cards offer your Amiga the fastest connection to the 
Internet, forcomms and for fax transfers. Available for the Amiga 1200 (these serial cards are 
placed within a prevousfy unused expansion port - leaving the PCMCIA port and trapdoor 
free!) and zarro-ll/lll based machines (zorro version suitable for 
A3000M000or a A12Q0 tower). High-speed buffered parallel option I 
avaitabte. These cards are currently the fastest senal cards avail- 
able for the Arniga. making the Internet work faster tor you! 

Modtl Machlrta 5p*clf1cat torts Pries 

HHwrcofl A1200 ' x ■iSOfiClOtips hsghspeed bulTered serial pcrr £44.^5 , 

Hypercom3 A12CM3 2 » 460. BDCtps fiighspeed buffered SMia! pons C79,S5 j 

1 X SOOK b^DS^'aec buffered paiallel port 
HyfMfComlZ Zorro-il 2 k 460, SOObpa firghspeed tnjfrerffd wrial pons £79.95 

^ K 500K bytftiVsoc bjtTertd p^iajlei poit 

Various Modem Pack Options 

Various money saving packs are availabfe. These are all based on either the 33. Bk or 56k modem 
plus a a cGlleciion o' extras. Call us for other pack options if ycu have your ovi/n. pack idea! 

CODE PACK CONTENTS j|HHK 

PK01 33.6 Modem & STFax 

33.6 Modem & NetConnect 

33.6 Modem & NetConnect & STFax 

33.6 Modem & NetConnect & Hypercomi & STFax 

PK05 33.6 Modem & NetConnect & HypercomSZ & STFax £159.95 

ADD £25 for a 56k Modem (instead of the 33.6k model) 

■ All packs come with one month free connection to a major Internet Service Provider 

■ Olher optior^s may be available - call 

■ Choose between the CD or Floppy disk version of NetConnect vi'ith your modem pack 
• STFax Professional will be despatclied on release 



NetConnect v2 CD Iranlales many eilrasiilaDlipes, mime Ipsllt'iinniliftixsiiit) ami nutchnttrEl £52.95 
NetConnect V2 Floppy Disks [oalrmliissltecorepnignnisliiglfritelpijiiiiinienlsl £54.95 h 

NetConnect v2 Upgrade from v1/v1.1 [lEsisicfciiNetCDinsivi/vi.iiinngcifj Ecall! 



Latest Teclinoiogy Modems 




PK02 
PK03 
PK04 



K56-lex modems are here! Download software and web pages uplo twice the speed of a 2B,8 modem. 56k 
mcdenis will operate at 33.6K speeds for uploading but you can cut your phone tiills drastically wfien using 
the 5BK technology! Isn't il about time you upgraded that 14.4 or 2B S modem? For further 
information about the new K56Flex (Rockwell developed) technology contact us! 

We only supply quality braniJed modems (Dynalin'k UK Ltd), which may cost slightly more 

than their unbranded competitors, but they ship with a 5 year warranty, the knowledge that a 

UK company offers support/information and you are buying a modem with quality (iF^ockwell 

based) components. 

KSeFlex modems need lo connect lo another K58FlaK modem in order to use S6K techrwlogy (make sure 

your provider suppotis K56Fle3c technology). Call for further technical details. 

- Ouaiiiy bjanfligfl Dynaimk modem (supponed by DfRarmk UK L«fl 
■33600 bps DATA'FAXA/OlCE awKJem-true vM, Throughput to 

115.200 BPS Via V42 in data compfesston 
•Gioup 1. 2 4 isond'recoivo FAX (14.^) 

- Votce Commands. - DSVD up^rsctoabie {Dy aofhraiv) 
'Auto Answer 
'FutlDupPei SpesKer 

- Call Dpscnminatlon 

■ TsK on demand 

- SiMij!iarnious vace ard data (S.VD.l 

- Message pigybscii wia sound card t speaker m headset 

- Aulo mode deiocbart allQwv modvn So conr^ed ** a modem tliBt 
IS conriQured lor difefing connocdDn modes 

- Exlendfld AT (Haysa ci^mpaVbto) OOmrMOd Wt 

- L^pgradnblc ROM d^tp (ufaguardino ienin&L lutjrQ specHkationB] 

- BT anit CE Appraved 

■ Aifrkga 2Spin sio^ Surf S<|LtltrDL/PC 9pin »nai ca^te IndLrded 

■ With He^dphcoea and tAiaophono 

■ S yCtH ^urfrtfit^ ' also uf^du'gono rtgaraus Amiga lesla 




Send your order to: 
Active Software, PO Box 151, 
Dartington, County Durham, 
DL3 8YT, ENGLAND. 



•^ 01325 352260 



active@enterpnse.net 



POSTAGE/DELIVERY 



5Dp per CD far UK delivery 
■ El per CD !or EU' d&livery 
C2 per CD World ijclivory 
£i fgr 2'^ d^y deSivery 
£5 tor nvit day deUvcry 
£1S tor Saturday de^ivsry 



^21^ 



Make CtiC-tluC:S.'P.O. 5 pliyi^blc Id Acti 
Software arid send to the atJdre&s Uilad 
I opposite. We can accept cre^dit or debil 
card orders. For any additional infcrma' 
tionwIlusASAP! 



WANT MORE INFORMATION? 



We provide an lnforma|i&n pack covering 
NetConnect and the modules (Voyager, MD-2i 
etc), the modemi we offer, connectivity dis- 
counts and a sot of frequenlely asked questions 
and answers. Ask us to send you an Info paickl 



You can atso access the NetConnect homepagel 

for additional Info^ latest news and to download! 

a time-limited demo version at the software: 

http://Bmig3world.com/n&tconnect 



VAPORWARE PRICES 

)( you src not interested in liuyinn Nc1Cionn<^c1, y 
Vaporware Products individually: 
Voyager Next Generation 
Microdot- 1 1 



AmTolnet + AmTcrm Package Doa) 



3 suKhsrgo of €2.00 per prodtici. 







E20.0I 


m 




£18.00 
£18.00 
£18.00 




M 


£12.00 






£18.00 


boatjttt. 10% Discou 












ISSU 




UK only 



Missed an issue of Amiga Computing? 



Do not fear! Simply fill in the coupon and one 
will be winging its way to your doorstep! 



Back issues order Form 



Simply send a cheque or postal order for just £4.50 made payable to 

IDC Media. 
Tlie magic address is Amiga Computing Back Issues^ IDC Media, Media House, 

Adiington Park, Macclesfield, SKW 4NP. 

Please allow up to 28 days for delivery. 



D Issue 99- May 1996 



£T .00 J Issue 1 11 - April 1 997 £4.50 J Issue 1 1 4 - July 1 997 



£4.50 



□ Issue 102 -August 1996 £1.00 J Issue 112 - May 1997 £4.50 J Issue 115 -August 1997 £4.50 

a Issue 106 -December 1996 £1.00 j Issue 113 -June 1997 £4.50 U issue 116 - September 1997 £4.50 



Name 



Address_ 



Post code 



TeL 



[~~1 flfease tide if you do not wish to receive further information or spedo} offers. 



Spedal Offer: 1996 issues only £1 while stocks last 




AMIGA 



Amiga 1200 Magic Packs 



68020/14.3mz 
2MB RAM 



International, Inc. Jl^HL 



249„ 



A! UsT, THE Ahi« is back on sale with NEW machines from Ahiu liiiERNAnoNM. Inc. 68020/14^HIHZ 
All hach nes ak f uil UK Specficat.os wo co«e bunoi£B with WoaoWoaiH v4SE (Wono 6/HB RAM 
P=octssos|,TiiBBcCAL[v3.5 (5PEADS.HEET), DataStore vl . 1 (DATABASE), PhotoGekg V1.2SE JJOmbHOI 

&P£RSa'«.PANTV6.'l, ORaWSERVl.i, PlNBAlLMAHH.WHCAJiOHCM _ mmtt^n/t 

DiRtaom Opus 4.1 2 *"" MmSOV 



68030/40MHZ 
I0MsAAAf 
trOmHD 
ScmMmoO 



Em 



All Hard Disk models also ihclude the above sonvfARE & Scala MM300 pae-loaded, 
the Off oal Amiga Hard Disk hvjual d HD Install diS<. 



Lmtai l4"H»i 
A^ia OiBLE Suppled 



c159< 



Pr»E55CTAL 1 4" Hohio^ 
MihiiSync 15-31.5Kw" 

FLit<tS Free Dspia* 
Aw&ft Cable Suppled 



68040/2Smz 
ISmlUiM 
1.3eBHD 

56IU mmoo 

250WP5U 



68040/40mz 
34m RAMI 
I.36BHD «' 
5ciiuAIAI30O 
250WPSU 



Haro I>isks 



fat* 

UK 

WW 

CemfUti EtptmsitK Kii SeluHm ^ ^ 

f,rik*Amig*A1200 /Igfig.j^ 

Yes. at li>ig ust. a p^ofessjcwiI vrW* « / 

3*'*r TO install a HJCH CAPAOTr X—nf SO/ 
YEAR H.™ 0« WTHOUT BEMQVINS P*«TS^ 

FROM YOUR HACH,N£ OR BtNDIJjG YOUfl KEYROARD SRDIIJJ!) 

THE DRVt. Our p»c«s tout «t« EVERYTHING wj 

NEED 10 INSTALL IKE OHiyt 'MO AN AIIOO. CABLEi FOR 
KIKR AND 0«T*, llBTauaONS & 7 OSAS FULL Of HOT SO-TSVIE SUCH 15 

DiKTOUT Ofus 4. 1 2 (wiiTH £50). MUl 3, MCP, Galaca ACA. Viais 
OtOE!, Hoos, ReO«. ABaoh^and much MORE, An so-tsake (ak m 

KTAILED WTH OUR CUSIOd CUOl 'B' GO SWEH. All DKVES ARE PRE-JSIAUED 
1V:TH THE 5T5TEH SOFTWARE S *fiOVE 

1^ 1 CO "SIO - UNLIKE OIBEIB M PROVIDE WE 

•VGB £177.94 OISQ UST in C15EI 



YEAR 
WARRAMTY 



2.5 



GB 



wui IS n FIT ma Hut Pm nt 

TniTCUlFOIMOIEKTWU. 



Repairs 

by abutlified TecJtmians 

♦ An A^GA COMPl)IL.=S COVEFEO 

♦ Prices from as luile as £29.99 

♦ MASf REPAIRS BT WiZABD StQUIRE NO PARTS 

♦ Prices iiiClude Ihsured Qjtws? Couiokih S 
DBMm, Labour. Full Di.>gi.ost:cs, Ser-^.ce. Soa-; 
Test (, VAT. BIIIM^Dnm 

♦ Fast TuRNARCd.ND ■QiiuiQUMiUH 

♦ All Technows Affi Fuii» Tpaned i Qualu to 

♦ UPSBADES BOUGMI At SAME Ii«E FITTED FREE! 

♦ 90 DAYS Warranty ON ALL Rep«f5 

all fob IUST £ ATn + PARTS 

PARTS 

We mvE A lAROE mm of p/ws fob ALL Af lu's - Dbwes, 
Xeysoato. Mouse Pcwi5. Om ua toe. Please imi fc^ 



SSOc 




DPI 

3 m/TTON 

MICE & MATSf,-w2 

AWffiD WINNING Ifc.il' 

5600PI Resolution 

♦ 90% rating in CU Amiga 
♦ Micro Switched BunoNS ♦ AmigVAiari ST 

SWITCHABLE ♦ AlL 3 BUTTONS CAN BE USED WITH MANY 

BEtGE at BLACK f 12.99 



FRtE 

DRivBiDiskJ MAT £2.99 o^£l 



O DIRECTORY ^^" 
pus5 

THE ULTIMATE WORKBENCH 

REPLACEMENT & FILE 

MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 

Ccwell; !■; bs;. ■: i:; V.':'-ii'.:. t-.. ■ ■.■■'.■ '.. 
THE PCWER a Opus .i. »• « fi■•^; ; ".. 
ENWW3 WmnBtNCH ♦ C*MsFTP "c 5: ■ ■. K. 

FTP SITE AS * Fli LETER * hlEBI^H Hjl! ■ 

Tasking so 

YOUOU. 




VERSION 5. fc 

NOW 

SHIPPING 



m 



■' multiple Fi_E 
SIHULTAHEOJSIY 

n',;,'-|l *F'L[-Tv:.[ 



stiPPCflT ♦ Picture, Sowu h Fcki Vi£v»e8 * MUl h NewIcons 
Support » Sort Fiif Lists & dsplav Versions 

AND FiLETvpES • CTBERGRtPHtSUPPOBTEO 
tokbtn:h 2 f i Hard Disk Bequirec (Q* £^ff 3E99 



49. 



PC TASK 4 

AJrMCtJ 4S6 PC SsfltMot Emilthr 




VERSION 4.7 Featurins Advanced 486 samvARt 
NOW Ewlatioh, Oynamsc Compilation for 

SHIPPING FASTER EMULATION, LP TO 1 6mB 

' ACCESSIBLE UNDER MS-OOS, MDA. CGA. 
EGA. VGA i SVGA SUPPORTED. UP to 256 COLOURS Oil AN 
AGA HACHfflc. CybebGpaphic support, MULtiaE HAH) D.5K 
FILES OR PARTITIONS SuPPORIEO, CD-ROM A\D 

High DEraTY dsi/es Supported, Run MS-DOS 

SiJ'. I applications in a window OS WoskbeiiCh! Run 

_ Windows 3.1 in Enhanced Mode! Many times 

■pncV--^ *"^" T"*" ^''^lON 3.1 



4 A 6a020 Psxtisoa w Bltiip. 



:69« 



WITH THIi ZSOft' 

Enhanced Ahgh PSU 

FOR tlTTlE MORE THAH 



romrSox 



THE ran of a norhai 25-30* Awa PSUi 



2S0i,j4mfa 



DESiffiEDFoaASOO/eOOi 1?00(CD32also •^•^■^Vfl) 

WAiiA8LE|. Encased in Stlel Sl'BSvstef, Ail Cabies Suppiiec, Wmsrss 

(Jj-Li Fan. Illlp'.fl^o On/Off swtch. Monitor outlet on bacx of 

PSU. ft.Lf QMsnim PSU's USED, 3.5" & SIS' foin o&is 

A>A.'L*£Li ID POfttS EJTEPJiAL CD-RO^ 

:4^^ Hii--iD;..sr:. 

POWERSTRIP £~» -"» 

P*EH 4 KOHMAL PLUGGED OEViCES fMOMTDR, FIllNIER. 
SPEMeS ETC} DIRECT FiiOM THE BCK OF PLWERBOJ, TuRN ALL 
PSODuaS Ol/Ott MTH I'JST ONE 5«ITCM, 1 A 






Tl/RBOPKINT S 

PMr&JutiomlSt/hmi 



(ALL 

ABOUf 

UPGRADES 




If tou have a 
printer - you must get 
TjsboPrint. It radicallt 
lmiances the printouts vcu 
KRMAUY GET BY REPlXlW 
THE Ah6A PRINHR SYSTEM 

MTH THE Faster AKO Visibly 

Beher TurboPfwt System. 
QpTioiis iNCLDOE Poster 
pRimiNG, Colour Correction, Dithering, Colour Balakcing, 
0,'i-ScBEEN Preview and Much More... Host printers are 

SUPPORTED - CALL to CHECS. VERSIW 5 INCLUDES "GRAPHIC 

Publisher" to load multiple pinuRES, tioividual colour 

CORREOION, ROTATE, TWIST WD MORE, ENHANCED T(!UEMaICII 

coLO«,'a coRflsaiON, New drivers foft HP. Canon, mg^ 
Epson Stms a.nd Citizen models. Am ga Format AU 



sanruRN 

Ccw^*i fc.E iTn ALL h'KJ^ • H<>< 
Q^:i7T SONY Ofirvf * ROftuSi Msm C*SE 

S*.1I!>I ♦ L(* PW31 C0WIM»TI» # Tf-PJ 

PiwTnn£)cimOFMS 



e39 



;« 





/(I2O6 fxpansioH Cards 



Speed lhc=i=ASE of l? to 27 Jives ♦ 6S030/EC. 680<t0 an 68060 Processor 
RUNNING AT 33. 40 OR SOMHz ♦ MMU IN ALL processors (EICEPT 68030EC TfPEl 
FITS Standard A1200 - no problem i is suppled »iih a Heaisjnk 4 Fm ♦ Up to 32hb 
0= RAM CAN BE added ♦ ICtssiMi RtHAppfflG (eicepi 63030EC version! ♦ Optiowu. SGI-II 
Mi-i; : t 0,', ^LLcvTOMiC A 7M"i» SiMM ♦ 68040/60 HAL? aiit-a FPU » Batiew Backed CiOCk/Caukmb ♦ PCMCIA 
:";*: i.: ii. ■-'- w. STLL use PiHXXTS surt AS, 0.'=rDs;.e HD OR CD/Zappo CD-ROM OR SauRFSi t Zero Waiie State Desoi. 
SCSI-II Intdwe Foe Tit Hxmjk 6«030/6«I30EC/63040 h 680*0 Cahs -Supple) mih SofUBSE - tl^M 



'OSO/33 & FPU 

'030/40 (68030ECC-P, 

'030/40 & FPU 

(68O30EC Clip) 

'030/50 
'040/25 & FPU 
'040/40 & FPU 
'060/50 & FPU 



Omb 
£89m 

£99j« 

£]19.M 

£l79» 




4MB SmB 16MB 32MB 

elCMtM £129.M £l59*t e209M 

£l09.n £129.99 £159.99 £209.99 

£l19.9f El39jf d6999 £21«I9 

d39.9< £159n £18999 £239*9 

e199.M £219.99 £249.99 £299.99 

99 £24999 £269.99 £299m £34999 

£349.99 £36999 £38999 £419.99 £469jn 



Speed Increase of 2.3 times - 2.88mips ♦ Available wra 0, 4 
OR 8hb of 32-bii RAM installed ♦ Uses a Standard 72-pin 

SiHH ♦ Optional PLCC Type FPU (floating point unit) 
♦ Battery Backed Clock/Calender ♦ Finger CutOut to help 
siALLATiON ♦ Trapdoor Fitting - Doesti'T void wARRANPt ♦ 0-4mb - 

PCHCH COMPATIBLE (for USE WITH OVERDRIVE, 

swrrel eic.) ♦ Zero Waite State Desist. 



Om 

RAM8 £39.99 
RAMS £54.99 

& 33MHz FPU 



4m SiviB 

£59.99 £79.99 
£74.99 £94.99 




tASrLiacais 2 - ik only 

hjll ,\::i..'.'. ■■ ■-,,.'\'i.iFkpwi Gou3 
. C^, -.' ■ ' i.- :; I H !.=:>[>-«& Zwa 

=V=. £ll9.W 



DP Fax- 



■ FM;S la A»C 

■, '■' |,ii:C:Lr"ifi^ 
"-• GCLO - Akca 

'-■'.TBIL HOJEM 

E44,n 



IMAGEFX 2,6 " T«; N05' rOMPlEIF 
|... . ?- ,, ■ .j.P,,.. ; ..u-i ', :c£ 1-r 



33MHZFPUKIT 

PLCCT.isF?uiCf-.w-»iL^"i 
'2-j uffs • --»u ;; Mi-,f- ■ £29!w 



A500 51 2(FHH Expansion £M.« 
ASOOplui 1MB RAM EWANSKW £|9.t9 
A600 !>« (WM E>p»6m il9.M 
AIL wTH A FREE Opvs 4 iiwi>' M« ESO 



KJiS/DOCwsiCnaBL^iis .. 
£i4.n 

I DO ZS/OD DSKS A CGiaiH Ijsiij, 

{24.m 



4MB 72-PIN SIMM j20 

8hb 72-pin SIMM £40 

16ts72-PiHSiMM £70 

32hs 72-piH SIMM {120 
ALL SIMMs m NEW 

t..pHi.,^ f hlA= W^PPANTf 



ORDER HOTLINE 

0181-303-1800 

0181-303-1861 

WE ARE OPEN 9Am AND 5.30PM, MONDAY TO 

SATURDAY, TO PAY BY CREDIT CARD. TO PAY 

BY CHEQUE OR POSTAL ORDER PLEASE SEND 

YOUR ORDER TO - WIZARD DEVELOPMENTS, 

PO BOX 490, DARTfORD, KENT, DAI 2UH 



WM lifS I cONTAa us ON INTERNET 

1— 1 1^^ I I sales@wizarci-d. demon. CO. uk 

Ctinrjes shouU be payable » *IZARD DEVELOPMENTS. Pnccs 

i-lLc':' vat i, csrfiage !o tlie DIL namland. Please Add £5 tor EC dfsunaions 

^rz i''l'y Dthsi co-urtncs. All p,roSud5are ^ubieft TO avajlabilrtif, EiOE 

AavWised prws & sptaftcawjn may lWjjc winos;', ncTire. Al salts ife 

SLibl«l-.0 our Iradf^ conflrtHjns ■ l:f> a^jlaie or- reqjc^: 



Bt0ks£ i&lm 



l'S«)=R&iiri£-AI200 
teOER GUIOE - A1200 Neit Sief5 
Insider Guffi - Assembler 
INSDER GuioE - Disks 4 DitvES 
Insider Guide - Workbench 3 A to Z 
Total! Amiga - Workbench 3 
Total! Ahiga - AhigaDOS 
Total! Ahi':la - AKew NFV/ 
Tota:! Amiga ■ Assembler 

KASTE^WS AMi(iA SCRPTS 

M/mERtK A>«GA Be WiERS 
Masthhk Amiga f bnters 
Mastering AmigaDOS 3 • Reference 
Mastering Programming Secrets 



£14.95 
£14,95 
£14,9S 
£14.95 
£14.95 
£19,99 
£21.99 
£21.99 
£24.99 
£19.95 
£19.95 
£19.95 
£21.95 
£21.95 



AM&DOS Pack £34.99 

Total! Ahih - Am«*DOS & MasterinO AmisaDOS 3 
- Reference Usuallt £43.94 - SAVE NEARLY t9 

A1200Be5nkerPa» £39.95 

2 BOMS (hsOB AI ?00 6 «m STtM), A 60 Hhm Vho, 
4 06AS OF PO 10 GO nlTH If E BOOfSAlOKH 

Al 200 Wdskbench 3 Booster Pack £39.95 

2 K0I5 (E^iKS i DPft^5 it WOMBfNLK 3 A TO Z). A 90 
WWlt Video. I tusk 6 Rt^rftrKE CaJB 

••aimOKMODCBSBPIlOBUnS •• 
••»NBBlTll)%OfH" 




^^ 






^ !fn:i 

^^ litlfiWt 



*ii?3S&^^aL 



liliif 



Wffnn HO - 



K'.l*'-^- 



Meet the 









Silj 






Amiga Computing lias been 
home to the best-lcnown Amiga 
enthusiasts in the world, and 
now they edit Amiga Format. 









Join Nick Veitch and Ben Vost every 

four weeks as they take you through 

the world of the Amiga with expert 

reviews, exciting tutorials, 

innovative Coverdisks and 

up-to-the-minute news. 



"v-^t^^ 



^ v6lf 












wajw&Ttijte' 



■nUMi Air«( 









Qop 



10 TIPS 



Having used an Amiga for the last seven years or 
so, Neil Mohr has picked up a little knowledge 
about them. Before he disappears into the editor- 
ial wilderness, he would like to bestow this knowl- 
edge to you, our beloved readers, oh yes he 
would, so shut up and bloody listen. 

!. Wait for ALL disk activity to STOP 

This must have killed more files, disk and hard drives than anything 
else. Before you pul! out a floppy disk or reset your machine, or 
just go on to use another program, wait for your last program to 
finish writing to the disk. The classic is pulling out a floppy disk 
before a program has finished writing to it and usually results in 
lots of read errors and a reformat of the disk, so no big problem. 

The big problems start when you interrupt writing to you hard 
drive, either by resetting it (naughty) or a program happens to 
crash while another is writing to drive (annoying). This will general 
result in the drive becoming invalidated, and more often than not 
tfie file system cannot fix the fault itself. 

The only way to fix this is to resort to a third party program such 
as DiskSalv or AmiBack. These will scan your hard drive and fix or 
remove any problems they come across. 



2. Have an emergency recover disk 

Related somewhat to tip one. If you have a catastrophic hard drive 
problem that destroys your boot partition you are going to need an 
escape route allowing you to get your drive back up and running 
as easily as possible. 

The simplest way to create this type of disk is to make a copy of 
your original Workbench disk. To do this insert your Workbench 
disk in internal floppy drive, select the disk icon and from the Icon 
menu select the copy item. You of course need a blank floppy 
before you do this. The only program you really need is your file 
recovery program, either DiskSalv or AmiBack. Both are around 
200k, so before they can fit, a few files need to be removed from 
the copy of your Workbench disk you have just made. 

Right, we're going delving around the Workbench files. Double 
click the disk icon, select the window that has just opened and 
from the Window menu choose show/all files. Next delete the Util- 
ities drawer, don't need any of that stuff. 

Open the System drawer, select and delete; FixFonts, Format, 
NoFastMem, RexxMast and DiskCopy as none of those are really 
needed. Now go into the Libs drawer and delete, rexxsyslib.library, 
rexxsupport-library and amigaguide.library. Finally, from the C 
drawer you can get rid of Ed and Edit, you should now have more 
than enough room for either DiskSalv or AmiBack. 

If you want more room you can delete the following quite 
safely; everything found in the 1. drawer; amigaguide.datatype in 
the Classes/Datatype drawer and the printer.device from the Devs 
drawer. The whole idea is that if the worse should happen you 
always have something to fall back on, so keep the disk in a safe 
place - but not so safe you forget where it is. 




This month's ACA5 has been 
unexpectedly taken over by the 
surprisingly sober Neil Mohr 



BadaipStiecticin 




Prauer — rwd noi »ttc*» : 

DraiKr med Sir; OS-Aug-a?- 

Pta<« — rv«d Man flJ-flar-97 .. . 

VtOKt rwd Sun tj-fit^-il 16 31 2. 

Prawr — rved Sm »-fft-'r 12 u 17 

'•'■'• rvas f ■ - 

:v«J Sun U-«8>-9. .. 

-.^fH Sun 86-^-9? Urll 38 



fs.info 
Shell Info 
StofWe.ififo 



1,197 — rv-d Sm e6-Apr-9? U 

1.197 — -m-d Sun 65-*pr-97 U 

l,eS3 Tv-i 3w e6-Apr-9? 11 

1,663 n-a Sun 86-/kpr-97 U 

1,197 —n Hi Smi e6-<t pr-97 U 



Breferexa [ 



Cwictl 



AmiBack has savod the Amiga Computing hard 
drive many many timea over the years 



4. Get to know your Amiga 

Again, this is a tip that holds true for any type of machine. Try and 
learn a little about your Amiga, you do not have to know every- 
thing, but by reading problem pages you will start to recognise 
symptoms for common problems that arise. Things like assigns, 
wrong library files, badly configured DOSDriversare common prob- 
lems that are easily fixed if you have the basic knowledge and 
skills. So if you come across the problem, you can diagnose and fix 
it yourself. 



3. Constantly save your work 

No matter which type of computer you use this tip will always hold 
true. I do not trust computers, there are so many reason why they 
can just stop working and take all the work you have done that day 
with it. So every time you stop to think press that right Amiga and 
S key, I just did then. If the program supports autosave then use it, 
but even so save regularly yourself. It is a good habit to get your- 
self into, sometimes I find myself saving work after the end of 
every sentence. 



5. People without hard drives 

For anyone that bought their Amiga (and is still using it) without 
one, a good tip is to go out and buy a hard drive right now. You 
have no idea what a hard time you are putting yourself through. If 
you own an A1200 I'm sure you could pick up a second hand 40 
or 80Mb IDE drive for next to nothing from a PC shop. For modern 
PCs, drives of that size are useless but Amiga users can still get 
away with such small drives. Personally I would still recommend 
going for at least 500Mb, but then my Workbench is 100Mb. 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



6, Separate Workbench partition 

One way to save yourself a lot of grief is to make sure you have all 
your important Workbench files stored on a separate partition, 
then have all your program and data files stored on another parti- 
tion. This reduces the chance that you could destroy your boot 
Workbench partition, so making it impossible to boot your 
machine, as you are more or less exclusively using your work par- 
tition. 

Here at Amiga Computing towers, we have a separate i20Mb 
Workbench drive and a 1.2Cb Work drive and I cannot remember 
once losing the internal drive to validation errors - the external 
drive is another story, at one point it was going down several times 
a day. 



7. Upgrade your machine 

It is the one thing I have never regretted doing. Through all the 
years, whenever I added to my Amiga, the pay back was always 
instant and obvious. With my A500, extra memory allowed me to 
do more, and an external hard drive let me do it more quickly. 

On my A1200 more memory made the machine twice as fast 
and allowed me to use much larger documents and graphics A 
monitor allowed me access to 1 : ! ratio screen modes and a larger 
work area. The Surf Squirrei greatly improved Internet access and 
the access it gave to external SCSI devices such as Zip and CD dri- 
ves made my life much easier. Finally, with a fast accelerator, a half 
gigabyte internal drive and access to virtual memory 1 am never left 
wantingwith the A1200. 



formed is backing up your program and data files. There are a few 
ways to go about it. Either back your entire drive up, this takes ages 
and is not really necessary. Secondly, you can have a single drawer 
in which you store all your data files and simply back this up. This 
is very quick and as long as you store away all your original pro- 
gram disks if you do lose your drive you can get back your all the 
important files. 

The final way is to rely on the Amiga's archive bit, every file as 
an archive attribute bit attached to it. A backup utility will set it and 
if at any time after your last back up the file changes the bit is un- 
set and next time you do a backup this is noted and the new ver- 
sion is backed up again. Personally, I go for the second option. 




LIB r»<l am e-lp-9! u a » 

1.G3 n-e ir. K-tfi-^ U »13 



ABackup is a wondarlut backup program 



8. Get these programs 

As there has been no development of the operating system since 
the A4000 came out back in 1992, the Amiga still lacks some fun- 
damental necessities and more general points that would make it 
a polished product. To get around these limitations I suggest you 
get the following programs (all these have been on past Amiga 
Computing disks, but if you have missed some here is the list). 
They are all PD so will not cost you an arm and a leg. 

MCP or MultiCX - Either of these will do, personally I go for MCP 
but many still prefer the simpler and smaller MultiCX that also does 
an admiral job of fixing all those little holes in Workbench and Ami- 
gaDOS 

MagicMenu ■• simply makes those dull pull down menus a much 
more pleasant experience 

ToolfVlanager - Whether you use version one, two or three this is 
the best way to add menus, Applcons and even docks to Work- 
bench 

WBStartup-i- - Adds extra control to your WBStartUp drawer 

CiassAction - A multifile recognition program that allows you to 
handle all your different file types through a single program icon 

Swazlnfo - Replaces the rubbish Workbench icon information 
window with a much better one 

PowerSnap - Written by Nico Francois, PowerSnap gives as close 
to global cut and paste as the Amiga is going to have 

KingCON - Replaces the old Amiga Shell with a far superior ver- 
sion with menus and a scrollable buffer 



9. Backup your files 

One thing that is mentioned more than any other but rarely per- 



10. Get on tiie Internet 

Magazines like Amiga Computing are all very well and good, they 
do provide good expert information of the latest Amiga products 
as well as tutorials, tips and news, but anything that appears in 
print is generally at least a couple of weeks old before you get your 
hands on it, simply due to the printing process. 

If you want to get the latest Amiga news, information and pro- 
grams you need to be on-line. Internet services such as IRC allow 
news to be passed on almost instantly, and superb Web sites such 
as the Web directory and Amiga Flame give a central hub for the 
collection of Amiga related news and developments. 

The Internet also offers the best way to get hold of the latest PD 
and shareware programs from Aminet and, with just about every 
company now on-line, it is easier than ever to get product support 
via e-mail and downloadable program updates from their related 
sites. 



fGA 



uoni ror^ » WQTD or AAQi preis 

Mjfl or:* kpc fw pwae pm «» 

u iriua evcryinng nn Men uicxh 
ce ide n Kk uc X Mr 27ir 





[HfXlltif IACASIE<»»u. 
.SlUUU I Auec I liUIHtU I UO&f 



^*i^^ 



The jTiost visual, 
but not neces- 
sarily the most 
informative part 
of the Internet, 
the WWW gots a 
lot of attention 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



I or in G man in Shetland who 
was worried about paying 'through 
the nose' for what was advertised as 
a service "without the excess'.... 




Zetnet Services explain why 
some providers can be a 
false economy. 



01595 696667 
01595 696548 
info@zetnet.net 
http://www.zetnet.co.uk 






:ecr)ec 

internet service 

Contact the world 



® No set-up fee 
Q) UK local call access 
(D No on-line charges 
® 5Mb Web Space - Free 
® Fast modem access 

(Standard service supporte 33.6kbps) 

© Free technical support 

® Free software 

£90.00 annual subscription or 
£8.50 per month (INCVAT) 



Advert cre>I«9 osiaf Wri g ht 



<bt1p://ttww.wTfgbt«:xa.u)t> 



Windows 95 Utilities 

if you use Windows '95 tlien you need 
"Windows 95 Utilities"! 




Whether you use your PC for work, for leisure or as 
a hobby, Windows 95 Utilities is packed with 
everything you could possibly need. Each issue 
features the very best programs for tuning 
Windows for speed and adding functionality The 
programs are categorised and sorted for ease of 
access and use into Disk, Graphics, Internet, 
Music, IVliscellaneous and Hints and Tips sections. 



Configure Windows 95 to run faster and better 
Add functionality that Microsoft left out 
Upgrade old software to the latest versions 
Everything you need on each Coverdisk 
Each issue is packed with help, hints and tips 



NO Dos, NO Win 3.1, NO games - just cool tools for Windows 95! 
Issue 7 on sale NOW - Issue No 8 on sale 11th Sept 



ome in, number nine, your time 15 upTSince this is the last 
ever Public Sector, in addition to a handful of the latest 
and greatest releases, I've decided to share with you 
.not only a selection of the most indispensable PD and 




shareware utilities ever, but also a collection of my thoughts on 
the future of our beloved machine. A fond farewell to all, and, 
as Dave Allen used to say, may your God go with you 

And in the end, the love you 

take is equal to the love you 

made. Dave Cusick takes his final stroll 

down Shareware Street, and sits thoughtfully contemplating life 

after AC on a memorial bench in PeeDee Park 



Qtar boy 



Programmed by: Fire Fly Productions 

Available from: Saddletramps PD 

Disk No: G77 



GAME OF 
THE MONTH 



Instractjans 



Although it owes more than a little to 
the classic platformer, lames Pond II: 
Robocod, Starboy is probably the best 
game of its kind to appear on the 
Amiga for several years, even if full 
commercial releases are taken into 
account. Available as a full licence- 
ware release but with a PD demon- 
stration version also obtainable for 
just 80p plus postage, Starboy is a 
colourful, entertaining and absorbing 
platform romp. I've only seen the 1 1 
level demo, but it's enough to con- 
vince me that purchasing the full 
game would be a worthwhile invest- 
ment. 

The appealing main sprite has an 
array of moves at his disposal. As well 



as leaping from one platform to 
another to progress through the levels, 
Starboy can throw stars at the baddies 
that block his way, press switches to 
lock or unlock doors and even swing 
from ropes so as to get across chasms. 

In an effort to inject added longevity 
into what might be considered a fairly 
pass6 genre, in addition to the stan- 
dard platform-based levels there are a 
smattering of graphically pleasing, 
horizontally scrolling, blasting stages 
too. 

With glorious parallaxing visuals, 
decent sound effects and a bouncy 
title tune, the presentation of Starboy 
is impossible to fault. It's also chock- 
full of small puzzles, helping add a 



_i These «ost be 
cBllectEd to 
clear 9 level 

Extra Health 



Exit tiheo au 

the bonbs are 
cotlectiBd 



Ybu can haog 
frsn chains 



"1" When walked 
■M> into, ttiese 
*^ transport 

you ta 

anoitier area 






pynabfnatQr; This is how all 
computer games should be made 



lUP 3 SCORE 1518 COM 89% LEV 



genuinely addictive edge. The full ver- 
sion of the game includes 55 levels of 
action, with five different graphical 
themes, and is available for £3.99 plus 
50p postage. 



2538 BOMBS 4 LEV 2 




Starboy offors soma truly addictive gameplay... 



..even if it ia an unaahamed done of flobocod 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



QuT OF Spice 



Produced by: Kinky 

Available from; SaddleTramps PD 

Disk No: 038 A&B 

They've taken on the establishmint, and 
doubtless shocked many old Sage 
pensioners. They wear revealing 
cloves in which more sweet and . 
innocent girls would feel a mite 
chilli. In the short thyme that 
they've been around, they've 
already broken a host of chart 
records and changed the 
chives of many pre-pubes- 
cent girls. They seem to be- 
cumin more popular by the 
day. This autumn you may 
find that a lads' Friday night 
out no longer consists of a 
coriander few beers; instead 




they will be nipping down the local cin- 
namon to see Spice Girls: The Movie. 
In a few years, the Spice Girls will have 
been and tarra-gon, and much like 
this column they'll be nothing 
more than a dim memory 
in the minds of the 
masses... then we can 
all be chervil. In fact, I 
do confess that I mar- 
jor-am reviewing 
these disks parsley 
because there was 
orega-no way I 
could miss the 
opportunity to pack 
as many poor spice 
puns as I could think 
of into one of my 
final Public Sector 
reviews. I just couldn't 
keep the temptation at 
bay. I do apologise; I shall 
end your saffron now, dear 
reader. 

Out Of Spice is an ACA-only 
demo featuring a fairly tuneful sample of 




Qhristmas Card Maker 



Produced by: Classic Amiga Software 

Available from: Classic Amiga Software 

DiskNa:PAllB 

I realise it's a little early to be thinking 
about the season of good will, but AC 
won't be around when December 
comes and, as Lord Baden-Powell was 
keen to emphasise to young boys every- 
where, it pays to be prepared, 

Christmas Card Maker is an example 
of an extremely good idea which should 
inspire creative types to produce some 
genuinely impressive results. It is a col- 
lection of small Christmassy images and 
verses which can be pasted onto a sup- 
plied master page using any decent 
paint package. The image can then be 
printed out to make an extremely cheap 
but nevertheless reasonably good-look- 
ing Christmas card. 




Snow IS falling atl around me, 
playing having fun... 



ehildrsn 



^^B 


^^^^^7^^ ■ * ~^tti3 


M^ki^m 


W^ 


Hta 


^^^^HHfefi«^*'^te ^cP^^v 



...It's tha saaaon of lova and 
understanding; Merry Christmas everyone 



There are five verses, several "Merry 
Christmas" messages and a dozen or so 
snowy scenes, which can be combined 
very easily in DPaint, Personal Paint or 
any one of a wealth of other packages. 

A potential problem with the 
bitmapped image-based approach 
Christmas Card Maker takes is that such 
graphics can, unless created at an 
extremely high resolution, tend to look 
jagged or blocky when output. Although 
the snowy scenes provided are all only 
around 320x256 pixels and have to be 
output at a size of around 115x70mm, 
the finished cards don't actually look 
too bad. The results obviously aren't 
going to be on a par with commercially 
available cards, but they look a whole 
lot better than Blue Peter-esque hand- 
made efforts. 

As I have already suggested though. 



the famous five, a few slightly grainy 
scanned pictures of selected Spices, and 
the usual smattering of moderately 
impressive visual effects. It does not last 
for a particularly long time but, unlike the 
vast majority of demos, you might actu- 
ally want to dig it out of your diskbox 
more than once to show people. Or then 
again, you might not 




ou have 

your 

spice -cake 

today? 






the most important quality of ChristmaPI 
Card Maker may actually be that it will 
inspire many Amiga users to have a go 
at designing their own cards - even if 
they do so using graphics from else- 
where, or a DTP program as an alterna- 
tive to an art package so as to obtain 
higher quality text output. As such, this 
represents another in a long line of sim- 
ple but sensible disks compiled by Clas- 
sic Amiga Software, and although some 
of the images and verses supplied are a 
little disappointing, there should be 
enough here to really get your creative 
juices flowing. 







And here's the finished pivduct 
Impressive, most impressive 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER J 997 



PrDgrammed by: NC Gamez 

Available from: Classic Amiga Software 

Disk No: G528 

This is a cutesy platformer in the mould 
of the massively successful Mario series 
available for the Nintendo consoles. 
Fayoh is still under developnnent, and 
so this disk only contains a 5-level 
demonstration version of the game. 

The titular hero Fayoh is in actual fact 
a green fruit gum, who has lost his 
heart to a "pink 'n'cute" female fruit 
gum. Unfortunately, he's lost her too, 
and 50 he must traverse a colourful 
platform landscape to find her once 



more. 

The graphics are extremely bright 
and attractive. In addition to the pleas- 
ant gradiated backdrop there is even a 
simple parallax scrolling effect, making 
the game especially pleasing visually. 
The music is suitably cute and inoffen- 
sive, although I doubt that you will find 
yourself whistling it in the shower. 

I feel that I ought to be extremely 
fond of Fayoh, but I have a couple of 
reservations about wholeheartedly rec- 
ommending it. Firstly, perhaps owing to 
the fact that Fayoh was written in Bliti 
Basic rather than in C or Assembly lan- 
guage, on a standard A1200 the action 



is a tad pedestrian, although on faster 
machines things become slightly more 
frantic. Secondly, the game crashed a 
couple of times during testing 
(although admittedly this only seemed 
to happen when the program was 
started from the Workbench, and not 
when I booted from the Fayoh disk). 
Still, Fayoh has not yet been com- 
pleted, so perhaps the bugs will have 
been ironed out of the finished ver- 
sion. The full game is set to include 28 
levels and various different graphical 
styles, and will be available to those 
contributing a shareware fee of 
between £6 and £10. 




Fayoh otters eulesy platform tun tor all... 



,, ^although it's not yet coinplclc, 
are only five levels to explore 



Qhe DLP Collection 



Programmed by: David L Pap worth 

Available from: Classic Amiga Software 

Disk No: G527 

This is a collection of David Papworth's 
gaming creations of the last few years. 

Mad Bomberman is a fairly simplistic 
game but will nevertheless provide a few 
minutes of entertainment At the top of 
the screen the eponymous bomberman 
peers over a wall and drops a series of 
bombs which you must collect in a blue 
container. If any bombs get past you, you 
lose a life. If you manage to collect them 
all, then he drops another series of 
bombs, except this time the/ll fall faster 
and there will be more of them. It is not 
the most intellectually demanding of 
games, but I've certainly seen worse. 

Obliteration is a Pang clone. You take 
control of a Turrican-like sprite packing a 
directable firearm, and you must destroy 
several asteroids bouncing around the 
screen. Larger asteroids split into smaller 
ones when hit so if you are not careful 
you can end up with a large number of 
rocks hurtling around the screen. Unsur- 
prisingly, if your warrior is hit by an aster- 
oid then he will lose a life. 

Atom Smasher is a cracking maze 



game which reminds me of an old Acorn 
Electron game called Pengi. You (and a 
friend, if you've got one) take control of a 
little robot chappy wandering around 
screen after screen populated by meanies 
which can only be destroyed by pushing 
blocks into them. With beautifully smooth 
graphics and an impressive turn of speed, 
this is hugely enjoyable, frantic fun, espe- 
cially when played in the cooperative 
two-player mode. 

Super Obliteration (originally reviewed 
in issue 81) is, unsurprisingly, an 
enhanced version of David's earlier effort. 
It is not radically different from the origi- 
nal, but the graphics seem a little tidier 
and there are a host of new levels to try. 

In addition to Vector Battle Ground, a 
reasonable enough tank game, there is 
also a demonstration version of David's 
Licenceware classic, Outfall. This is a clone 
of the Megadrive gem Mean Bean 
Machine, and it is undoubtedly one of the 
greatest two player games available for 
the Amiga. 

If you don't already have Atom 
Smasher, Super Obliteration or Outfall, 
this disk represents an essential purchase. 
Catering for a wide variety of gaming 
styles, it comes highly recommended. 



You Never Give 
Me Your Money 



Arrow P 



nt CT15 4AP 
: 01304 832344 
E-mail: hadji @artowpd.detnon.co.uk 



Classic Amiga^Software 

^.-JULDeansgate...^ 

Manchester 
.. . Tel: 0161 723 1638 



m 



Jill 

addletramps PI 

'■"wer Mill Close' 
loldthorpe 
Rotherham ^ 
South York " ' 



: phil@ware5d.demon.co.uk 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



Come 
Together 



Every mol^Bi^^^d a decade. Public Sector 
has tried to bring yoli tlie very best in PD and 
Shareware. Over the 39 issues in which I've 
been in charge of the column, there has been a 
constant stream of submissions both from 
Public Domain libraries and from individuals, 
and I'd like to thank you all for your support. 
As Neil joked to me the other week, there have 
been times In recent months when it has 
seemed like this column has contained the 
only new software arriving in the AC office. 
Writing the last ever Public Sector has been 
quite a sad experience; 1 would like to think 
that this column, into which I've poured more 
of myself than anything etse I've written for a 
magazine, has provided some amusement over 
the years as well as helpful information and 
opinions. 

Alth ougki fff ,flM .^^a pptl this day would never 
come, nff^^^Be^w it has seemed some- 
thing o^nrin^abliity. The good ship Amiga 
Computing has sailed its final voyage; the crew 
must toddie off to pastures new and those who 
enjoyed the precious bounty it bore must now 
find an alternative purveyor of provisions. So 
what will you do now, dear reader? Will you 
abandon the Amiga altogether, convinced that 
the end of AC marks the final nail in a coffin 
within which our beloved machine has been 
[anguishing for some time? I would hope not; 
and if you are to follow the flock and purchase 
a PC, then 1 would at least suggest that you 
keep hold of your Amiga... just in case. At least 
then you'll be able to return if the possible 
Power Amiga revolution materialis^^nd even 
if it doesn't, you'll find the PC is n^^- beast 
which is easily tamed. '^ ^BT" 

That said, 1 strongly suspect that, if you've 
stuck with the Amiga this long, you will be will- 
ing to carry on the fight after our departure, it 
could be that you will turn to one of AG's com- 
petitors... whilst this is not the first Amiga 
magazine to wave a fond farewell, it isn't the 
last either, and there are others still flying the 
flag. (One of them is now home to erstwhile AC 
editor Ben Vost, and indeed yours truly will 
continue to churn out PD and Internet pages 
for that publication for as long as he can). 

On the other hand, you might decide to fol- 
low a large number of dedicated Amigans onto 
the Internet. There are so many excellent 
Amiga resources on the Net now that you 
should always be able to keep up to date with 
the latest developments in the software and 
hardware markets (and my Public Sector web- 
pages at http://www.dcus.demon.co.uk/ will 
remain in place fQi^ha|orseeab1e future). With 
any luck, at Irifflpj^ig^ these sites will be 
championing the Amiga long after this humble 
column has become but a distant memory in 
the minds of coiiBtaMBBEeKerywhere. 




I Want You (She's So Heavy) 

I know ifs a tad corny, but I couldn't resist the temptation to award some sort of Pub- 
lic Sector awards to the best pieces of software to have been reviewed in these 
pages. In issue 1 14 I ran through the best in PD and shareware games, so here, for 
your deliberation, cogitation and digestion, are a handful of "serious" programs no 
Amiga owner should be without. If you don't already have them, ring up your 
favourite PD library and order them now. 

Magic User Interface 

I've currently got v3.8 installed, although by the time you read this that could easily 
be out of date. This is without doubt one of the greatest pieces of software ever writ- 
ten for the Amiga. As means of providing programmers with extremely easy-to-pro- 
duce interface routines and providing users with a highly configurable, not to 
mention extremely attractive, front-end, MUl is simply in a league of its own. Some 
will say that ClassAct uses less memory, or BGUI is more compact. To those people I 
say that several thousand Amiga users and literally hundreds of Amiga programmers 
simply can't be wrong. Get hold of a copy, register with 5ASG, and enjoy. 

IiviageStudio 2 

Everyone needs an image processor, and they don't 
come a lot better than ImageStudio 2. Programmed 
by Graham and Andy Dean, whose latest masterpiece 
DrawStudio is available commercially through LH 
Publishing, this is the definitive shareware graphics 
package. It can read and write every image format 
you'll ever need to deal with, and it boasts a stunning 
arsenal of effects too. 

Master Control Program 

The commodity that does everything, MCP is an absolute essentia! for any self- 
respecting Workbench user. It demands a fair bit of memory, a fact which has led 
some to use MuitiCX instead; but that is an inferior program in terms of features and, 
lefs face it, most Amiga owners these days own powerful enough machines to run 

MCP on. 

Browser II v3.09 

If you can't afford Dopus Magellan then, at least until 
Workbench 4, WorkbenchNC or a similar replacement 
Workbench appears, this is probably the single most 
dramatic change you could make to your daily file-han- 
dling. It won't be to everyone's taste, but it is user- 
friendly, highly configurable and has the potential to 
radically increase your productivity. 

NewIcons 3 

Not everyone fancies Magic Workbench, particularly if they have a fancy graphics card 
which is capable of running Workbench in a plethora of colours. Newicons 3 offers a 
rather more bright colourscheme, and although icons will look completely stupid on 
non-patched systems (they'll appear as a tiny blob), on suitably configured systems 
they look extremely attractive. They're a tad slow on lesser Amigas however. 
Newicons 3 won't be for everyone; but it's one of those programs that if you don't 
hate, you'll love. 

TOOLMANAGER 2 

There's a newer version, but if anything the new user interface overcomplicates what 
was already an immensely powerful, if slightly illogically designed, user interface 
enhancement. You can add items to the Workbench Tools menu and you can con- 
figure icon docks, with the end result being a far more sophisticated Workbench in 
which all the most powerful applications are available within a couple of clicks. 




Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



UK CustoTTiers call 
01709 886127 



US Customers call 
1-800-426-7687 



FREE Catalogue Disk 



5D Software (AC) 

1 Lower Mill Close 

Goldthorpe, Rotherham 

S63 9BY 

Amiga 5D & F1 Ucenceware 

Amiga & PC Public Domain 

Amiga & PC CD-Roms 



Sagittarius Software (AC) 

1706 Canton Road 

Akron, OH 44312 

USA 

Amos Compiler 

Amiga 5D Ucenceware 

Vulcan Software 



Call your local dealer lor details of our supetti Amiga mnge. Games, Utilities and Educational programs 
starlina from just C3.95/S6.50. To claim your free catalooue disk just call the UK number shown above 
anil quote AC3 or send two first class postage stamps lo 5D Software. Most ot the products have PO 
demo disks, so you can try them out first. 



Websites 



http://wvrW.wareSd.demon.co.ofc 
http;//sas$oftald.ne! 



CARE QUALITY & SERVICE 



O 



QUALITY INK JET & BUBBLE JET REFILLS 



Olf rcTslk jst; i.tiU liipijiijilv inki. Yoj buv dirv^'i fn:m U5 htTic iiJf vupcfh ^jUJlil\ at Kfiiib]: prices 

Black refills for HP Dokjel 500.510. 550. SfWC. 35QC, 560C,"6«0C. 850C 

CANON BC-OI. BJIOE/EX/SX, BC 02. BHOO, BJtJO, BJ300, BJ330 

EPSON STYLUS 800. 1000. CITIZEN PROJF.T. OLIVETTI JP150. 250, 350. 

6 refill (3 on high capacilv cartridges) kit I2«inl pyre black. £16.99 

CANON BIC 210, 600. 4000 Ranges up lo 20 rEruis pore tJliick, £16.99 

EPSON STYLUS/Colour/ll/IIs/500 120ml pure black. £16.99 

TRICOLOUR REHLL KITS: 

HP Deskjcl ransc 10 refills of Yellow, Magenla & Cvan 180ml £24.99 

CANON BJC210, BJC600. 4000/4100 10 refills of Yelloi. Maetnu iCyan 180ml £24 »9 

EPSON STYLUS Colour/ll/IIs/iOO Yellow. Magenla & Cyan 60ml each £24.99 

"Print Head Recover^' Ruid" for unblocking nozzles, new larger si?j;. new lower price £6.99 

all kits eoiiiL- wilh full instructions. Other fxsfllls available. 

Inlpiirlaiit; Please stale Type when orderint; 



Colour Printer Ribbons & Reloads 



To RfloaJ .1 rii^K*!! i^ cj\v. jiihl rt-nu 


\e the top 


lake ei 


1 the o]l1 


r^btjoj] jnd tcki^ it wi[ti j new one. 


Curaplcii 


One 


Fi>i- 




ribt)oi\ 


re bad 


reloads 


Citizen S»irt/ABC^40 eit. 


£11.93 


£6.99 


£29,95 


Panisonic KXP2 12.1/21 24/2180 


£9.99 


£6.99 


£29,95 


Panasonic KXR 135 


£9.99 


£6.99 


£29.95 


Star LC200 9 pin 


£9.99 


£5.99 


£29,95 


5uirLC24-llV2(l/2IX) 


£9.99 


ffi99 


£29,95 


.Star i.r:4-im.r24o 


fS99 


£4 9*1 


£19,99 


.Seiko, ha SI.'IS 


1:1 -.95 


£(!.« 


£29, 9S 



Special Re-Ink 



For Panasonic 1080/81. 
1123/24, 2123/80, 2135, 
Star LC200 9 Pin, Epson 
LQ 100/ ISO. Oki 182 to 
390 range. Black bottle 
will re-ink 100 + ribbons 
i:'»,95 



Black Printer Ribbon Reloads 



Citizen Swifl/ABC/120D 5 black relij:iJs,, £9.99 

Star LCIU/20;iOO 5 black reloads £4.99 

Star LC24 ranfi: 5 black reload.! £9.99 

Seikosha I900/2400/SL9J 5 black reloads £9,99 
EfSonFX SO 10 L0800 ranges Hack reloads£l 1.99 
StarLC24-30a.a40S black reloads ._ ,_£14.99 



T-shiri printing is simple, just prim onto 
normal paper & iron on. One ribbon gives lots 
of prints. We can also supply ribbons in many 
colours T-shin and normal ink. 



T-Shirt printing ribbons 



4 col Cili/en SttilVABC/240....£19.99 

4 col Paniuionic 2123/2135 £19.99 

4 colour Star LC200 24 Pin £19.99 

reloads for above £9.99 

4 colour Star LC200 9 Pin £12,')y 

4 colour Star LCI ..£10, 911 

reloads for above £7.99 
Black CiUKn Swirt/ABai20D £9.99 

Black Star LCIO £9.99 

Black Star LC200 9pin .£9.99 

Black Panasonic KXF1080/81 ...£9.99 
Black Pimasonic KXPl 123/24 ...£9.99 



Prices inclutic VAT & postage. To order seni! chequcs/FO payable tn; 

CARE PRODUCTS 

■ DepI AML", 15 liiillund Gardens, Watrord, VVD2 6JN ^_ 
or Use VisiayMastertaj-d or Education order ^^ 

Ki!x order line D1923 6721U2 ^^ 



Tel ORDER LINE 01923 894064 




1st Computer Certtre 16 

Active Software 31 

; Care Electronics 43 

Chroma 28 

Classic Amiga 28 

Computer Systems & Services ....28 

Gastelner 13 

Golden Image ..7 

Guldhall Leisure .24 

Harwoods IFC, 3 

Hi-Soft „ „ IBC, OBC 

tlCPUG „ ...^8 




Kew = II .281 

Mediasoft 20i 

Moore Healey Marketing 28 

Pathfinder Pd .28 

S & S Computers .28 

Saddlatramp PD......... 43 

Special Reserve 26 

Undergrou nd PD 43 

While Knight 23 

Wizard Developments 33 

Zetnet-.,. ........37 



[FREE FREE 

j GAMES CHEATS 1.4 EMULATOR 
I ON ALL ORDERS 




FREE FREE 

LIBRARY DISK POSTS PACK 
ON All ORDERS 



; PLATFORM GAMES 
In 1330 CAPTAIN BONUS 
•o 123J ROACH HOTIl. 
I a 1«5 10 CW. QAWES 
1.^ ISSJUHCE-O-IOT 
la 1462 CHARLIE COOL 
I a 1701 ns HIPEOUS 
la 1G34 THE BIBDIES 
I a 1S7B JUMRMAN DELUXE 
I a 200} A12 BAHAMA IS 
t SPACE BUSTERS 
la 9115010 ASSAULT 
in SWOBLntRATOft 
I a 498 THE LAST REFUGE 
I a 1434 SPACE BLASTER 

a 1789 MEGA TI'PHOON 
la Its; AI2 SPEEDBftEAK 
I a 188S BLASTED 
■a 1904 CREEPY OlAWUE 
! a 1921 WITNESS 
la 1935 SPACE ESCAPE 
la 1942 GALAXY BUT2 
' AHCADE GAMES 
la 273 Kf ILOGS EXPPESS 
I .1 1368 ALIEffS EF. 
1. 1 1333 STRIKE COMMAND 
1.1 1500 U.PD. 24 GAMES 
1-1 1880A12SUPSTREAM 
|,. 1903 A12FLy TIGERS 
I a 1944POSIDEN 
la 1948 ANTS 

■ a 1998 SUN -NOT 13 
ja 2008 A12«l KICK IT 
iP-D VERSIONS 

I .1 025 HUHTEB PLUS 
,:i BIS LEUMINSS PACK 
I a 023 RICK DANGEROUS 
' , 14S7 T1-F1CHTER 
' ,1 022 THE GODS 
! a 02« R0aoCOPV2 

a 1702 S.W.O.S. MOON 
la 177BPINBAU. FANTASY 
I COMBAT GAMES 
•a 941 FATAL BLOWS 
1.1 938 MARTIAL SPIRIT 
1.1 290 FiGHT WARRIORS 
I.I 1238 V/EAPON MASTER 
I .1 1421 CYSERSAf^ES 3DSK 
|., 1548 FIGHT Al 200 
I a 1720AUO(15AMUfll 
I CLASSIC GAMES 
I a Oil ASTEROIDS 
I a 693 MISSILE COMMAND 
I a 77S OVERLANDER 
|.i 692 SPACE INVADEdS 
!.i B41 COOKIE 
[.I SO* DONKEY KONG 
I DRIVINd GAMES 
i .1 9S1 FUMING ENGINES 
! ,1 1469 THE ROAD TO HELL 
•c 1417 MANG FENDERS V2 
'a 14E6A12 KNOCK OUT 
I,, 1642 A12MEX RACING 
la 1705 A12AER RACERS 
I. 1B93BCISSCAR 
la 07a Fl £0110(1907 
IS/IML/t/5ro«5 
la 332 SEALANCS-SUB 
la 333 BAHLE CARS V2 
i.i 926HEUCOPTER 
|.< 1273 At2 TRAIN DRWR 
I SPORTS GAMES 
I a 1014 CRAZY GOLf 
I a 630 TEN PIN BOWLING 

■ a 11712DSKCRS-ANGLER 
ja 1373 ICE HOCKEY 

:.i 13I7A12G0NFISH'N 

,. 1465A12 2 0ISKnNNIS 
!.i 1251 TOUR TENNIS 
' ,-. 1630 INTER CRICKET 
\.i 1700 GOLf 9 HOLES 
I HIHTS S CHEATS 
Is 41B1000CHEATS 
ta 931BAaDOOflV3 
1 ,1 B21 PASSVJORD MANIA 
la 81 3 CAME TAMER V4 5 
1 , . 820 MESA CHEATS 
I a 681 SIERRA SOLUTIONS 
I a inSUPTODATtVI 
I I 1358 GAME SOLUTIONS 
|.i 16S3 SOLUTIONS V3 
I a 1651 SOLVES 6 DISK 
I OVER IS GAMES 
[a 997 2DSK ADVENT VI 
'a 1001 20SK ADVEHTV2 
[a 101 TERROR UNER VI 
■a 1081 AOULTTETRIS 
la 12« STRIP POKER 
1,1 1145 Al 2 NUMBERS VI 
1.1 1335AOUITDJIOIDS 
la 1S33 DRAGONS BAU. 
la 1517 ADULT BOMBER 
la 16S4 lEGO BREAKOUT 
la 1768 4 DSK A12 ADVENT 
I a 1906 iUNO DATE 

r 



TETRIS - COLUMNS 
a 294 KLACK-TRIS COLMS 
a 107 TWINTRIS TETHIS 
a 293 ORMARIO COLMS 
a 1602 SUPER FOUL EGG 
a 1627 PILL-MANIA 
a 19 19 VANILLA TETRS 
a 1954 A120(l PLUflZ 
a JOOOAIJWORM-TRIS 
FAC-MAN GAMES 
a 1(I96PUC-MAN 
a 1 133 A12 CYBER MAN 
a 1346 WARES PAC MAN 
a 1648 A12 BOBS LEMON 
a 230 SUPER PAC MAN 
a 19J1 A12 PLAY PAC 
a 19S61ACK-MAN 
BREAK-OUT * PONG 
a OOSMESABAILVI 
a 159MEGABALLV2 
a 14S9CYBEMP«Efi£ 
a 559 MEGABALL V3 
a 1704 BOfllS BALL 
a 1853 DOUBLE BATFIE 
a 1324 OUTSIDE BREAK 
BOULDiROASH GAMES 
a 1527 ICE MINE PRO 
a 1S9S NEW MINES 
a 1569 BUG MINES 
a 1572 UNDER MINES 
a 1573 GOLD MINES 
a 1577 EMERALD HEAD 
a 15S0 EXPERT MINES 
a tSB2 DENMARK MINES 
a 1583 STYX MINES 
a 1 692 SPACE MINES 
a 2013 WONDER MINES 
PUB-CLUB GAMES 
a 1304 CHECKERS V2 
a 22! FRUrr MACHINE 
a 375 CARDS SOLTAIRE 
a 1246 AMIGA CRIBBAGE 
a 1 362 PUB DARTS TOUR 
.1 560 WORLD DARTS 
a 14511 SAT SNOOKER 
a lil2A1200XCAROS 
a 19J0A12 DOMINOES 
a 1929 A1200 YAT2EE 
BOARD GAMES 
a 910 NEW MONOPOLY SEAT 
a 631 SCRABBLE 
a 476 CHESS GAMES 
a 1433 LIFTS a LADDERS 
ADVENTURE GAMES 
a lit STAR TREK 2 DISK 
a 797 NEIGHBOURS 2 DISK 
a 1671 BREED 1996 
a 1753 A1200 GLOOM 
a 1694 TIME RUNNER V2 
a 1925 DUNGEONS 
SrflA7fGYG^Mf5 
a 376 GLOBAL NUKE WAR 
a 326 IND-E5PI0NAGE 
a US! A12 NIGHTMARE 
a 1170A12LOF1DS205K 
a 1431 UfO UNaOTHED 
a 1S47SOLOSIAR.TREK 
PUZZLER GAMtS 
a 953CHANEQUE2 0I5K 
a 859 10 PUZZLERS 
a 1550 PUZZLE PITS 
a 1546 EXPERT BALLS 
a 1633 THE WOOGUES 
a 1765 BRAIN BALLS 
MANAGER GAMES 
a B76 SCOTTISH LEAGUE 
a 321 AIRPORT 
a 443 SUM BAU 
a B17 BLOOD BAIL 
a 1429 UITI MANAGER 
a 1699 PREMIER PKS 
a 17S3AI(tTRAffJC 
a 1771 MICRO MART 3 
OUIZ GAMES 
a 1031 TREK TRW 5 OlSK 
a 716 POP MUSIC QUIZ 
a 309 THE QUE MASTER 
a 462 WHEEL OF FORTUNE 
a 1597 QUIZ 555 
a 1683 HOLLYWOOD TRIV 
a 1670 A12 DEATH ROW 
LOGIC GAMES 
a 1037 MARBLES GAME 
a 1035 ATOMIC GAME 
a 119 DRAGONS TITLES 
a 112 DRAGON'S CAVE 
a 1477 30MB MANIACS 
a 1476 MARBEL'LOUS 
a 1687 TILE MANA 
a 1922 LOGICS 
a 1960 BLOCK BLANKS 



AMIGA LEISURE 
s 205 AMIGA PUNTER 
a 228 PERM CHECKER 
a 1210 LOnO LUNATIC 
a 143BA.GENEV5 
a 1 594 LOTTERV SYSTEM 
a 1682 THE PHYSIOAN 
a 1932 DYNAMIC SKIES 
A-1200 MEGADEMOS 
a 1270 DOOM RAVE 
a 1165 VENTILATOR 
a 1414 2 DISK DOVE 
a 1415 MYSTIC ILEX 
a 1725 DREAM WITH ME 
a 1783 FATAL MORGANA 
a 1939 ATMOS.FEAR 
a 1934 A12 7DSK LIARS 
a 2002 POKE THE EYEI 
AMIGA MEGAOCMOS 
a 460 TEKNO RAVE 
a 101S2DSKTAZQUEEN 
a 1120 2DSKTAZ.OUEEN! 
a 11M2DSK0XYGENE 
a 1084ASC1INOTI.3 
a 17SS TECHNO TRACKS 
a 1816 BATMAN 2 DISK 
a 1985 COLOUR aClE 
A1200 SLIDE SHOWS 
a 7404O1SKMANGA 
a 1271PIXELSTORMS 
a 1193LEMM1NGTONS 
a 1646 MISS MANGA 
a 16S0STARFLEET3DSK 
AMIGA SLIDE SHOWS 
a 704 REVELATIONS 
a 061 PAT "JAGEL-S GIRLS 
a 936 AVIATION HISTORY 
a 1498 NIGEL MANSELLS 
a 1472 YABA DABA DO 
ARTWORK PACKAGE 
a 063 ULTPAPAINT 
a 349 SPEQRA COLOUR 
a 748 ILLUSION PAINT 
o 1460 A! PAINT PAD 
a 1565 CARTOON STUDIO 
a 1707 PERFECT PAINT 
a 1760 JNR PICASSO 
a 1937 DOODLE NOT 13 
ARTWORK PROGRAMS 
a 1299A12MAGNI-CAD 
a 071 GRAPHICS CON KFT 
a 070 GRAPHIC UTILS 
a 133 FRAC LAND BUILD 
a 102« PICTURE LAfl 
ANIMATIONS 
a 084 PUGGS IN SPACE 
a E51 FAIBLIGHT 247 
a B31 RED DWARF 
a 475 BAIT MASKING 
a 347 NEWTEK V3 2 DISK 
a 187 ANIMATION STUDIO 
AMIGA VIDEO 
a 329 VIDEO INSCRIPT 
a 7SOV1DE0IRACKEB 5 DISK 
a 14E S . MOOVIE 
MUSIC MAKERS 
a 220 FUNK KEYBOARDS 
a 431 RAVE KEYBOARDS 
a 202MEDV3.2 
a 729 DRUM MACHINE 
a 787 SONIC DRUM KIT 
a 738 0aAMSDV2 
a 136 THE ART OF MED 
a 192 THE COMPOSER 
a 618 MUSIC DATABASE 
a 931 AUDIO ENGINEER 
d 126S HIPPO PLAYER 
a 1681 PROTRACKER 3,5 
a 1791 OaATUTOR V5 
a 1971 SAMPLE MAKER 
CLASSIC - POP 
a 1029 COnONEYE SONG 
a 20T PL4N0 CLASSICS 
a 23« VIVALDI 2 DISK 
a 342 AMIGADEUS 
a 213 DIGI CONCERT V2 
a 620 BAGI^PE MUSIC 
a 248 EXPRESSION V2 
a 473 RHYTHM'S OANCIR 
a 1357 2MEGDACOV1 
a 1759 GUITAR BLUES 
a 1757 HEAW METAL 
a 1800 TEKNO MAGE 96 
a 196S BEATLE MANIA 
SAMPLES - MODS 
a 660 KORG 1W 8 DISK 
a 647 SOUND FX 3 DISK 
a 619 DRUMS 7 DISK 
a 1666 URBAN 6 DISK 
a 1588 DANCE 5 DISK 
a 1258 MOVIE SAMPLES 
a leZBNEWWORMSSFX 
a 1861 MONTY PYTHON 
a ISSOANS^VER.PHONES 



AMIGA EMULATION 
a 423 2 DISK SPECTPUM 
a 389 PC EM 2 DISK 
a 327 ACTION fttPLAY 
a 955 DOV™ TO ASDO 
a 313 UPTOA500 PIUS 
a 4KUPTOA120O 
a 1977 REL04;KK 1,41 
DISK COPIERS 
a 727 MULTI TASK (MT) 
a 158X.COPYPRO 
a 357 COPY AND CRACK 
.1 325LOCKPICKERV2 
a 1667 COPY « CRACK V2 
a 1396 COPY » CRACK V3 
HARD DRIVES 
a 779 W/B 3 INSTALL 
a 780W/B2INSTAa 
a 490 8 DISK MAGIC W/B 
a 1692ABAQ{UPVS 
a 1674CDATAPI 
a 1775 2 DISK MUl 3-6 
a 1770 2 DSK ERROR TAU< 
a 19« GAME INSTALLL V9 
a 1967GAMEIN5TAaV10 
PRINTING 

a 243 AWARD MAKER 405K 
a 065 AMIGA FONT 7 DISK 
a 100 PRINTER DRIVERS 
a 048 PRINTING STUDIO 
a 345 BANNER MAKER 
a 057 TEXT ENGINE V4 
.1 394 INVOICE PRINT 
a 749 FORM PRINTER 
a 1658 CARD AND UBEL 
a 1S4! PRINTMASTER 
a 2012 FONT EDnOR 
AMIGA BUSINESS 
a 832 DATABASES 2 DISK 
a 092 ACCOUNT MASTIR 
a 470 UTTLE OFFICE 
a 244 SPREADSHEET 
a 535 UK 5T.D COOES 
a l464 01ARViOOO 
a 1368 AMiBASE V4 
a 1758 DAILY UVING 
a 1976 NOTE-800K 
COLOUR CLIP ART 
a 637 6DISKCOUBRUSH 
a 633 7 DISK CUP ART 
a 901 9 DISK WORLD MAP 
MONO CUP ART 
a 172 15 DISK PORTFOLIO 
a 55!7DlSKaiP«lT 
AMIGA MODEM 
a 70! COMMS TUTORIAL 
a 413N. C0MMSV3 
a 079OPTICOMMSV2 
a 1037 MAX BBS PROG 
PROGRAMMERS 
« 288 A-BASIC TUTOR 
a 306 UNDERSTAND AMOS 
a 722 TONS OF AMOS 
a 1 067 AGA DATATYPES 
a 1691 NORTH C 
a 1754 AMIGA DOS fRAU 
DOIT YOURSELF 
a 239 SUDESHOW MAKER 
a 808 MAKE A DISK 
a 242 MENU MAKER 
a 1154 MEDLEY GUIDE A12 
a 1903 MAKE A DISK V! 
VIRUS CONTROL 
a 506 Al 700 VIRUS 
a 160 MV.K. PLUS 
AMIGA UTILITIES 
a 1030A12OIONICTOOli 
a 612 4 DSK TOOLKIT 
a 1629UN.ARCHIVER 
a 1983 CRUNCHERS EG 
DISK i, SYSTEM 
a 166 SYSTEM TESTER 
a 467 Flli UNOEliTE 
a 194 DISK OPTIMISE 
a 356 ENGINEERS KIT 
a 245 FIX DISK 
a 168 HARDWARE li(AN- 
UAL 

a 1BB1 HARDWARE HODS 
AMIGA EDUCATION 
a 766 GEOGRAPHY 
a 532 MATHS 5 DISKS 
a 644 ENGLISH 4 DISK 
a 436 UNGUAGE5 4 DISK 
a 270 PLANETS 6 DISK 
a 304 ENGINES 5 DISK 
.1 1269 DPAINT 4 TUTOR 
a 937 A1200/ 600 TUTOR 
a 1361 3 DISK INTERNET 
... 1360 AMIGA GUIDE 
a 19ISKLING0N TUTOR 



, DISKS COSTftSO EACH, WO MINIMUM ORDER, ALL VIRUS FREE AND USER FRIENDLY 
I All Games are on 1 disk and run on sll Amiga! unless otherwise stated, 

I PICK AN EXTRA DISK FOR FREE WITH EVERY EIGHT DISKS YOU PURCHASE 



i UNDERGROUND P,D„ 54 CARMANIA CLOSE, SHOEBURYNESS, ESSEX SS3 9YZ, Tel; 01702 295887 

I Name: /^miga Model: 

I Address 



Postcode:. 



3 



THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO 
HOME COMPUTING 




OCTOBER ISSUE ON SALE NOW! 



PC Home offers something for everyone; newcomers and old hands 
alike, families and individuals, cutting through the clutter of the PC mar- 
ket it provides a clear and Informative guide to home computing. We 
aim to cover as much as possible in as much depth as possible. 



SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE 

In every issue you'll find: 

; — Whatever the latest developments — be they hardware, software or Web-based 
— we cover them all. 

HARDWBRED — the newest hardware tested to destruction and a round up of the best 
products around. 

SAE'rfileS^ — Previews and reviews of all the best (and worst) new games, with walkthroughs, 
hints and tips. 

gySli^gSS PARK — working from home? We review the software designed to make a 
SoHo business run smoother and more efficiently. 

THE WES — the Internet is given a comprehesive and unique going over. 

EDUCAT80N — all the latest educational software marked out of 1 by our resident expert. 

t^ssi^mi R(f5R5P _ art packages, music generators, reference programs — whatever the 
interest we have something to suit you. 

F!RST AID — problems? We solve your troubles as well as print the latest tips and tricks to 
help you get the most from your machine. 



PLUS... THE MEGADISK 

PC Home is the only PC leisure title to carry a quality fully working product on its CD-Rom every 
month — without fail. In the past these have included CorelDraw! 3, Hutchinson's Encyclopedia, 
Comptons Encyclopedia, Multipedia, Redshift, Bodyworks, Picture Publisher, PC Paintbrush... 




Available from all good newsagents 
or to subscribe call: 0151 357 1275 



Paul Overao 
brings you 
up-to-date on 
a sampling 
package 




TftchnoSoundl 
Tbrbo % Pro 



While other platforms seem to have 
almost discarded 8-bit sound sam- 
pling (or at least keep very quiet 
■^^^ about it), like it or not the 8-btt world 
is still the norm for most Amiga users. One com- 
pany that has been making samplers for almost as 
long as the Amiga has been in existence is New 
Dimensions, and early last year it brought out an 
updated 'Pro' version of its popular TechnoSound 
Turbo 2 sampler. 

One improvement was the move to 12-bit sam- 
ple processing on many internal routines. Although 
the main reason for the higher accuracy routines 
was to allow the software to be used with New 
Dimension's own 12-bit sampler (whidi is now no 
longer available), the extra accuracy did however 
reduce potential quality loss even when manipu- 
lating 8-bit samples, so overall these new 
enhancements were of benefit to everyone. 

I should also mention that not all processing 
carried out by the software is being performed 
using 12-bit calculations. You've still got 8-bit direct 
to hard disk recording, and real time effects like 
phasing, echo, delay and the special Runtime 'nov- 
eh/ effects (e.g. Pinky & Perky, Daiek and so on) 
are also perfomied in 8-bit mode because high 
conversion speeds are needed. 

The TurboSound software itself is fairly compre- 
hensive. As well as the main range of digitising, 
sample editing and manipulation functions, there's 
a 'ramscan' option for grabbing samples directly 
fi'om memory and 'edit lisf arrangements for 
maintaining sets of samples in memory for imme- 
diate use. There's also integral sequencer and 
tracker facilities and a useful Midi module which 
enables samples to be triggered using a Midi key- 
board or external sequencer. 

The package has some nice filtering routines 




New Dimension's S-bit sampling cartridge 



I J File Fdit BcalttHg Susten 



HE CEB ->-■;>.■ CEaiff!,,]«I 




TachnoSound Turbo's sottwara has undergone 
various improvements ov&r the years 

and a facility for editing individual channels. Digital 
filtering essentially means applying certain mathe- 
matical transformations to the digitised waveform 
- you can, for example, use a low pass filter effect 
to remove unwanted hiss from a sample. Tech- 
noSound Turbo can apply low pass, high pass and 
band pass filtering using either the Buttenworth or 
Chebyshev filter equations. You can view frequency 
response graphs that show predicted amplitude 
attenuation and even get a display called a Z-Trans- 
fer plot. 

Now all (this unless you are actively involved in 
the world of digital signal processing techniques) is 
likely to sound a little high powered (the theory 
behind it certainly is). The best thing to do is just 
let your ears be the judge, remembering that ifs far 
better to concentrate on getting a good quality 
sample in the first place than to rely on digital fil- 
tering to improve things. Having said that, there's 
no doubt at all that TechnoSound's filter and real- 
time effects are good fun to experiment with! 

On The Line 

Despite the fact that nowadays the TechnoSound 
Turbo Pro 2 software is only ever bundled with 8- 
b'rt hardware, this makes an excellent basis for con- 
ventional 8-bit sampling. Talking of hardware, one 
alternative to the TechnoSound offering is of 
course HiSoffs Aura sound sampler. Make no mis- 
take, this package is good (very good) but not 
everyone is able to take advantage of this because 
the Aura hardware requires a PCMCIA slot In short, 
this effectively means that the Aura option is onfy 
available to A500/A1200 owners and users of 
other Amigas must follow different pathways. 

It's also worth remembering that anyone with 
earlier versions of the TechnoSound Turbo sampler 
can, for a modest fee, still upgrade their software 
and this is clearly a worthwhile option. 



Amiga Computing 



Let's face it, despite the 16-bit or nothing "hype', 
for many purposes 8-bit sampling is perfectiy ade- 
quate and samples are inherently smaller in size 
than their grown up 16-bit relations. Of course 
when you combine hardware such as is provided 
with the TechnoSound package with other music 
software (such as the OctaMED Sound Studio), 
then the door really opens. Time and time again 
musicians have shown that combinations like this 
can enable you to produce tracker modules sec- 
ond to none. 



Botl: 



iine 



Requirements 

RED essential BLACK recommended 



Any 
Amiga 



Product details 



Product 



TechnoSound Turbo 2 Pro 



Supplier 



New Dimensions 



Price TT2 Pro software 

with e-bit hardware £39.99 

Software upgrade for existing 

TechnoSound Turbo users £10 



Tel 



01291 690901 



Scores 


Ease of use 


80% 


Implementation 


90% 


Value For Money 


80% 


Overall 


80% 



OCTOBER 1997 



Paul Overao makes 
a start explaining 
how to create 
and use random 
access files 




RttllflOuyil 

Access Files 



Last month I outlined the use of ARexx's 
SeekQ function and mentioned that it 
could be used to provide the basis of a 
I^M number of sophisticated file access mech- 
anisms. I also mentioned that there were plans 
to show how the function could be used to parse 
file structures. However, having thought more 
about this, I decided that for starters we really 
ought to deal with conventional random access 
file handling first. 

Random access files are based on the use of 
fixed length records containing fields whose 
position and size within each record is also fixed. 
You might, for example, chose to set up a data 
file consisting of records set up like this... 

tield jiiies: 

sizes (bytes) 20 20 10 10 

There are two approaches to building such 
records. Firstly, you could use SeekQ to address 
each field of a given record individually - thus 
storing each field of the record as a separate 
opefation. The disadvantage here is that many 
seeking and writing operations may be needed 
to write each record (if there are many fields). 
The alternative approach (and the one usually 
adopted is to build up the complete record) is to 
make one SeekQ operation, and store the whole 
record in one go. 

Now it's fairly obvious, in the latter case, that 
data items collected must be padded to the right 
length in order to make the resulting record size 
right. ARexx's LeftQ function comes in handy 
here and if the variable 'surname' for example 
needs to be brought to a length of 20 characters 
by padding with blanks, this expression will do 
the job: 

surnaie=surfisie||L(ft(surni!«e,20,BL*fll() j- 

BLANK, incidentally, is a pseudo constant set up 
using the expression BLANK=' ' in order to make 
the code easier to read! 



ttitisliseHaTn: Procedure 

srj fllenait, record, recofd_tount 

if Opsri(iain,fiUiiaie,'«') then 

do 

do i=1 to record_toant 

tall KriteBecofddsin, record, i-1) 

Close(iain) 

end 

return 

UsHng 1i The Initialise lAainl) 
pneadure lusd bf Setup.rexx 




Rather than embed specific field name defin- 
itions within the example scripts I've opted for 
the more versatile approach of producing a sep- 
arate program that can create blank record ran- 
dom access files of any chosen type. 

This month's code, a program called 
Setup.rexx (which you'll find on the cover disk), 
does exactly this. It starts by asking you for a file- 
name and the number of fields that will be pre- 
sent in each record. Having got that information 
it opens a separate 'header' file (a file of the 
name you supplied but with a .hdr name exten- 
sion) and writes a field count, the name and 
sizes of the fields you supply, and the number of 
initialised records written to the file. 

Once the header file has been created and 
closed a call is made to an InitialiseiUainO rou- 
tine (see listing 1 ). This attempts to open and ini- 
tialise the main data file that will hold the 
random access records. Initialisation is very 
straightforward with blank record fields being 
created using: 

record:fe(0rd||teft{",field.5iie,BUKi;) 

As each field is defined an appropriate number 
of blanks get added to the record definition. 
There are simpler ways of setting records to all 
blanks but this approach is more generally useful 
since, where necessary, it may be used to ini- 
tialise each field within the record with different 
'empty marker' values. 

Providing the specified file is successfully 
opened, the initialisation code uses a loop to 



locate the position of each record and store (he 
initial blank records in the file. The routine that 
actually handles the record writing is called 
WriteRecordQ and it looks like this: 

MritsJeeordt Procedure 

arg gain, retord, position | 

tall Seekdain, (p9silion*Length(fecord)/B') | 
Eill Britechdain, record) I 

retufn ^ 

Notice how the byte position ol a given record 
within a file is calculated. We multiply the record 
number by the length of a complete record. For 
this to work we need to adopt the convention 
that the first record in the file is record 0, the next 
record one and so on. For normal purposes users 
like to regard record one as the first record in a 
file so it is necessary to subtract one from any 
user-oriented record numbers supplied to the 
above routine. That's where the i-1 comes from 
within the inner do-end loop of listing 1 ! 

Over to you! 

Take a look at the script on the disk, try running 
it (using the rx command) at a Shell window and 
look at the sizes and contents of the files pro- 
duced. Confirm they represent the right sizes for 
the record definitions you supply. (I should men- 
tion at this stage that the example code has been 
deliberately kept free from error checking code in 
order to allow the main framework to be easily 
seen.) It works but for any long term serious use, 
error checking of supplied fields would obviously 
be advisable. 



ew STi^ll process 

.HorkDench:> cd r .. 

(.R4n [>isk:> rK setup 

'an : tvstr 1 14> 
ou nanv fields dD*s vach rvcord contain 

[a«a at f irtd T 

lurnaftfr 

ilza of f <»ld 1 

!■ 

- fi»ld 2 



'gJi'g 



|art^ of f t»l 
.hri&tlan Na 
14z« of f i* I 



•e 



d 2 



lane of f leld 3 
IT ar»» ;<"•» 
(lie of field 3 

|a«e of field 4 

ilia Df field 4 

JDw fianv racordfc In f I I 

[unction conplft* 
t.Ran Dlsk:> list 
(Irectorv "rani' e 
JSTFILE 
ESTFILE.HDR 
. rexx 



njiiu 



n: 



fzSif rued 

72 rwed 

1265 ^r«-d 

GSB rupd 

Ojr rwe4 



i £***Jti~.3 d(rBqtor4»» - 28 blocks Um*3 



Tadttv 

Todavr 

odAy 

"^odav 

oaav 

Ddav 
oamv 



8S:S3'. 83 
ae;s3:|3 
ae:1S:4J 

imlm 



ny using Ihe tetup.rexx program with your oivn 
ale dolinitlons thmn look at the created iiloi 



SI 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



Neil Mohr has 
some horrible 
flashbacks to his 
school days 




Leani your 
tables lioy 




ight, tables. These are one early addi- 
tion to the HTML standard that was 
desperately needed. With a little bit of 
planning you can get quite complex 
layouts that would be otherwise unattainable 
using the normal HTML tags available. 

A table allows you to define a rectangular 
space in an HTML document. This space can be 
split into any number of rows, which themselves 
can have any number of cells held in them. It is 
in these cells that you can place text and pic- 
tures. The easiest way of think about tables is as 
a grid, and each cell can contains text or pic- 
tures. 

Before I describe the various tags associated 
with tables I should say that the way you go 
about creating tables is very important. Once 
you have started, you define the table on a row 
for row basis. That is, you start your first row, say 
what ceils you want in it, then go on to the next 
row. 



<T*eiE 

KIDTH = "pixtes|percentj[t" 
8080EII = ",.." 
CELlSPACIHli = valuE 
C!LIP*D»!II6 = iisLu! 
CLEAR = LfftlrightlBil 
BGCOLOR = value 
NO»!AP> 

<C»PTIO«></i:ilPTIOS> 
<TR></TR> 

</t*BLf> 



Quickly looking at the table attributes - 




WIDTH allows you to say how wide the table 
should be in either pixels or a percentage of the 
browser window. Most people only use a 640 
wide window, so you could constrain table to, 
say, 600 pixels wide. 

Cellspacing and cellpadding allows you say 
how many pixels should be left blank between 
cells and around the cell's contents. CLEAR stops 
text flowing around the table. Only one caption 
tag is allowed within a table. 

A new table is defined by using the <TABLE> 
tag, the end of the table is shown with the close 
tag <AABLE> the table definition has to be 
contained within these two tags. To add a new 
row to the current table, use the <TR> table 
row tag, within this you can add as many <TD> 
table data cells as you like. These two tags do 
have corresponding close tags, but generally 
browsers automatically assume them closed 
when they come upon another occurrence of 
the same tag. So when a browser comes across 
a second <TD> tag, the first is closed. Quick 
example: 




This creates a small table with three cells in 
it, one on top and two bellow. The browser will 
automatically size the table - to precisely fill the 
cells. This is how the generic table works. Great- 



I NEED MY OWN SPACE, MAN 



Just before 1 go for good I think it is worth mentioning 
one little technique that ! have come across a few times 
on my travels around the Web. Commonly known as the 
single pixel GIF 'thing' it gives you a way to get more 
accurate layout outs, well essentially pixel perfect layout. 

Before you can start you need to create your self a 
transparent single pixel C!F image, either Personal Paint 
or Photogenics 2 should do the trick. So what use is that 
you may be asking yourself, well using this in conjunction 
with the IMG tag's WIDTH, HEIGHT or H5PACE and 
VSPACE attributes you can space to your Web site or 
white space as it is know in the Publishing industry. 

So how do you use this then, well say you want to run 
a margin down the side of some text, all you would do is 
at the start of the text insert the line: 



■^mg srt='single.gif afigrHeft width=40 height=400> 

Now there are a couple of things to consider here, 
firstly AWeb does not support image scaling, so in AWeb 
this would not work. So the alternative would be to use 
the spacing attributes which would look like this: 

<dmg src='5ingle.gif align=left hspace=20 vspace=20O> 

Remember that the space adds the same amount to 
either side, so only half the number of pixels need to be 
used. Again this will work in AWeb and iBrowse but not 
in Voyager, but really it is the more correct way of using 
this technique, how hum, I sure this will added soon. 



ing tables like this is a good way of testing them 
before you add the clutter of image and text 
tags. 

So, as you can see, basic table use is simple. 
It allows you to place graphics and text a little 
more neatly on screen, and of course using the 
<P ALIGN= ... > tag you position it on screen to 
some extent. 

To make tables more flexible in how they lay 
out the cells, a number of attributes are provided 
inthe<TD>tag. 



<TI) 

KVUf 

ROVSPAN = t}[it 

COLSPAN - value 

ALI6N = Uft|ri9ht|tent(f 

VALICff : l3p|cent!r|bottoi 

IIIDTH = pinlslperctntjge 

BSCOUR = »alue> 



body ttit 



</TD> 




SIraightfonA/ard tags such as VALIGN and 
ALIGN allow you to force cell contents to middle 
or sides of a cell. Again, with width, you can tiv 
to force the browser to restrict the size of indi- 
vidual cells, but this may not always be possible. 
BGCOLOR lets you specify a value such as 
#ffffff, for white, and so colour individual celis. 

This leaves ROWSPAf^ and COLSPAN - two 
very useful attributes that allow you to break up 
the otherwise grid like layout, One example 
would be if you inserted COLSPAN = 2 into the 
first <TD> tag in the previous example. This 
makes that cell spread across the top of the 
other two. 

ROWS PAN is a little more tricky as you have to 
make sure your following HTML corresponds to 
the number of rows you have stated. This allows 
you to create a column in a table - great for run- 
ning blocks of text down your page. 

Again, adjusting the last example, change the 
COLSPAN to ROWSPAN and make it equal 3, and 
insert a <TR> between the <TD>Cell 2 and next 
<TD> tag. Reload the page and you will see the 
first cell runs down the left side. (By the way set- 
ting ROWSPAN or COLSPAN to zero means span 
all rows or cells.) 

Oh dear, it seems I've run out of space and 
out of issues, for good use of tables check out 
the AC Web site at www.idg.ca.uk/amigacomp/ 
The index page is fairly complex and the ACAS 
page adds margins that look better. 



r:i.',n.f:My.i,i,ijinT?n 

OCTOBER 1997 



Paul Overaa uses 
Electronic Arts' 
cmpByteRunl 
compression to 
provide a few tips 



'^ Function 
Conversion 




I had an e-mail from a guy called Ian Howie 
a few weeks ago who, though heavily into 
680x0 coding, was having problems dis- 
^B playing IFF pictures. Tlie data in these files is 
normally compressed using a technique called 
cmpByteRun! compression and the difficulties 
related to the decompressing of ILBiVI body chunk 
data prior to jamming the resultant graphics bytes 
into a screen's bitplanes. In short some 680x0 code 
was needed to handle the decompression work. 

The standard way of doing this is to use a rou- 
tine called unpackrowQ which was placed in the 
public domain by Electronic Arts, Like many coders, 
I vmote my own decompression routine in the early 
days in order to make sure that I really understood 
how the CmpByteRunl scheme worked and, once 
I had written it, have tended to use it in place of the 
standard code. My version was written in C and it 
was only when the above query cropped up that 1 
sat down and produced a 680x0 version. 

The translation of a C routine into a 680x0 
equivalent is not usually that difficult Tfie most 
important thing, as you might expect, is to have a 
detailed understanding of what the C code is doing. 
Luckily the algorithm for the decompression in this 
case is simple: You read through the IFF body 
chunk data looking at each byte treating them as 
"signed" numbers. 

If, while reading the source info, you find a value 
between and 127 you then read and copy one 
more than that number of subsequent bytes to the 
chosen destination. Reading a value of 10 therefore 
means you copy the next eleven bytes of the source 
(i,e. the body chunk) to the destination (a bitplane). 
If, on the other hand, the byte read is negative 
you do one of two things: If the value lies between 
-1 and -127, instead of copying bytes you disregard 
the sign and duplicate the next byte that many 
times plus one. Values of -128 are even easier to 

! do ' 

' ge! byte n 

if n >=0 { 

increienl it and apdate current rou length 

copy (ntD bytes 

1 

else { 

if n!=-1Z8 { 

negate n, increient n and update turrent rou lengti duplicate 

[n+D bytes 

) 

) 

)i(liile(conditii)n>; 

update original pointer values 

Ir'sfin^ 1; Basic framework of thB 
C code (excluding error handlingi 





Here's the 
little test 
program used 
to check the 
6B0x0 routinet 



deal with because you simply ignore them! 

The nonnal reason for producing a 680x0-based 
version of a C routine is either to gain additional 
speed or to allow for easier use in assembly lan- 
guage programs. That said, whenever I do any of 
these translations I always code it initially as though 
the routine will be used irom C. Why? - because in 
most cases this enables any new equivalent 680x0 
version to be tested using the same program that 
the routine was taken from. You simply comment 
out or delete the C routine (keeping the function 
prototjrpe oi couise) and instead link your C code 
with the object code produced by the assembler. 

If, for simplicity, we ignore the problems of error 
handling (which involves checking to see that over- 
sized screen display rows are not produced) then 
the basic framework of the routine in C-ish pseudo- 
code is that shoivn in listing 1. Creating a 680x0 
version just requires us to produce the same over- 
all structure - you can see how I've done this in list- 
ing 2. Once this plan is available translation 
becomes simply a matter of hanging suitable code 
onto each of the sections and you'll be able to get 
these details from the coverdisk example code, 

I've also put my C version of the cmpByteRunl 
unpacking routine, UnPackRow.c, on disk and you'll 
see that it has this function prototype: 

BOOL error=UnPackl!oii(BnE "sourcej, BTTE 
"destj, VOED rouSiie) 

Notice that (he first two parameters are 'pointera to 
pointers' - in other words tliis routine expects to 
be passed the addresses of the source and desti- 



nation pointers. The reason is that the routine 
needs to modify and update the source and desti- 
nation pointers each time it is called and it can onf/ 
do this if it knows whereabouts in memory those 
pointers are kept 

For the parameter passing, incidentally, I've 
opted for the conventional stack-based approach 
and you'll find that the new 6S0xO version collects 
the source, destination, and rowsize parameters in 
aO, al and dO in this fashion: 



_UnP9ckRo» 

■ove.l 

■ove.w 



■ove.l 

8{a71,a1 

1Z!a7),dO 



4(s7),a0 



1 



The reason for the 4, 8,12 offsets is that C parame- 
ters are pushed onto the stack in right to left order 
so we end up with the word-sized 'rowsize' para- 
meter lying furthest away from the retum address. 
And thaf s pretty much all there is to it Once the 
routine was complete I assembled and linked it into 
a C program for testing, and the job was finished. 
Needless to say plenty of byte-saving could now be 
done but for me the time for doing such things is 
always after the routine has been written and 
tested During the initial vwiting period the only 
consideration I'm interested in, and you'll see this 
from the example code, is keeping the structure 
and puqjose of the code dearly visible! 



do_«liite_loop; love.b 

dl=originat 'n' variable 
t»p.b JOydl 

blt.s n_liss_tSan branch if 

Listirtg 2 



(a!)t,d1 



Amiga Computing 



OCTOBER 1997 



Paul Overaa 
provides some 
notes on Intuition 
Image drawing 




Sisploying 
Pichiras 



miimm^' ^--^ 



Once the C newcomer has reached the 
point where he can open an Intuition 
window and identify IntuiMessages, 
^^m chances are that the next objective will 
be to learn how to draw things on the screen. I tu- 
ition's arrangements for drawing graphics into mul- 
tiple-bitplane displays are, in terms of the 
underlying ideas, rather complex but luckily there 
is a pre-written library routine called Drawl mageQ, 
which makes the job of displaying graphics a piece 
of cake. 

DrawlmageO requires graphics data to be 
described using something called an Image struc- 
ture, but even this is not a problem because there 
are various utilities that can convert standard IFF 
pictures and brushes directly into these structures. 
Morterv Eriksen's Shareware PicCon program is 
particularly useful, as is the BrushCon utility written 
by Ken Howe (which can be freely distributed). 

Once this conversion operation has been done 
the Image structure is ready for use either by read- 
ing this graphics data directly into the source code 
of the program or by specifying the file holding the 
structure as a header file to be included during 
compilation. 

You'll find the details of the DrawlmageQ rou- 
tine and the Intuition Image structure definition in 
the accompanying box outs. To begin with, you will 
rarely need to wony about the intemal structure 
details because the required data will be gener- 
ated by the IFFImage conversion program. What 
you do need to know, however, is how to set up 
the parameters needed for the DrawlmageO call. 

Pointers 

Pointers (variables which hold addresses), and 
especially pointers to system structures, appear fre- 
quently in Amiga code and the DrawlmageO state- 
ment that you'll find in the example source, 
Drawlmage(window__p->RPort Sitest Jmage,8, 15), 
is no exception. 

The first parameter is a pointer to the windovi/s 
rastport (drawing area) and you will have already 



• a} tw^y ftiaptav Ex*t^^l# 




Function: SrauIiageO 

Ofscriptioji: This is Intuition's higk-levd Image drsning routine 

tall Foriat; Drayltagetrastportj), iiagt_p, t«ft_oifs*t, top_offsct); 

Irguients: rajtportj pointer to a BistPort 

ilijeji pointer to an liaje structure 

left.offset a general left offset nhich niU be osed uith all of the inlid Iiagt strircturts »1 a 

particular DravIaageO tall. 

top.offset a general top of<set uhitli till be used litti all of the linked Iiage structures of i 

particular DravIiageO call. 

Hslufn Value; Kone 



seen how this is obtained in previous examples that 
used the intuition library's PrintrfextQ function. In 
short if window_p is the address of a Window 
structure (i.e. the software entity that represents the 
Intuition window that physically appears on the 
screen) then the address of the associated rastPort 
for that window will be given by the expression: 

»ii)douj)->RPcrl, 

For the second parameter, Stestjmage, I've simply' 
used C's address-of (&) operator to specify the 
address of a statically defined Image structure. For 
example purposes a brush was aeated and saved 
using DPaint (and as you'll see I'm no artist), then 
BrushCon was used to convert it to an image held 
in a separate header file called testjmage.h. All 
that was needed was a preprocessor #include 
statement 

(include "testjsjge.h" 



lier examples and in fact the event handling loop is 
actually simpler than last month's offering because 
we are only detecting the use of the window's 
close gadget 

This month, incidentally, I've also included Ken 
Howe's BrushCon utility on disk so you can try 
replacing my test image with one of your own. Just 
create a similarly sized brush (or modify the win- 
dow size details in the example's OpenWindow- 
TagsO function 3II to produce a window of a 
suitable size for the image you wish to display), 
and then convert that brush to an image structure 
called testjmage naming the file test_image.h. 
Having done that, recompile the example and your 
new graphic will appear when the program is run. 

Graphics data, such as is found in an Image 
structure, needs to be held in chip memory and 
from C this is normally indicated to the compiler 
by using a keyword such as chip or _chip in the 
image data definition. Not all compilers are the 
same {although DICE, Storm C and SAS C all 
recognise _chip) and so, depending on the 
compiler you are using, you'll probably need to 
manually edit the image definition file that 
BrushCon creates and insert a couple of under- 
score characters in front of the 'chip' keyword 
that you'll find. Other than that, everything 
should be plain sailing. 



Image drawing courtesy of 
Intuilion's DrawlmageO rovtirta 



near the start of the main program source to spec- 
ify diat this extra file be read in and used during 
compilation. 

As always, you'll find a runable example and all 
associated source code on the coverdisk. The bulk 
of the code follows the same anangements as ear- 
Istruct Iiigt, 

VORi LeUEdge; /' left edge offset V 

VORt TopEdge; /' top edgs offset *l 

VORD Uidth; /' pfjel »idtti '/ 

UOX Height; /' pinel height '/ 

UOID Depth; /' iaage deptl (bitplane count) V 

UBOItb 'IiageOati; /* pointer to uofd-atigned data */ 

UBtTE PlanePick, fUoeOnOff; /' plane selection/state '/ 

struct Iiage 'Nejtiiage; /' neit iiage to render •/ 

); 

The Intuition Image sfructure: LeftEdge and TopEdge are offsets from the top left of the display ele- 
ment. The Width and Height fields indicate the size of the image and Depth tells the system how 
many bitplanes are in use. PlanePick identifies the planes in the real display which have been picked 
to receive the defined image data, and PlaneOnOff tells the system what to do with those plaries 
that are not picked. Nextlmage is a pointer which allows any number of Image structures to be linked 
together and displayed with a single call to the Intuition DrawlmageO routine. 




Amiga Coiviputing 



OCTOBER 1997 





f 




m 


r*ai^ 


''-3^ 


nS^K 


-^ T! 


-viB!l 


i.ir-'tr ■-'? 


^S^^ 












-' ^^-r 't''. 




.-./■iffc 


C- 


V^^gJ 


-."s-^^ 




^^wk 







And now, the tinne has conne, to face the final curtain. 
Yes it's the end of the road my friends. As TinkyWink 
would say, "Bye bye" 



Future releases 





Although we're not going to be around to write about them, there are some excellent 
games coming along in the next few weeks. Imminent releases include Myst which is set 
to be released by ClickBOOM on the Amiga after proving to be a great success on the 

Mac and PC. Expect its 

arrival in a few weeks. 
Likewise, Epic is planning 

on bringing out Flyin' High 

any time soon. The fast and 

furious arcade racer will be on CD-Rom and floppy disk and should be available for 

order within about a month. 
Oxyron has penned in a release date sometime in September for its latest project, 

the stunning looking Doom clone, Trapped 2 and German games developers Titan 

Software hope to release the futuristic flight si, Shadow of the Third Moon at about 

the same time. 
Amiga Action may be out for the count but there Is still plenty of quality software 

on the way so you'd better start saving your pennie..,. 



Tank Goblins 



% 



W 



*J^-^ -iii' 



W- 



U'J^^ 



Back in April we brought 
!#)/- ^1.-. *Jt^'^ ""m^ CI]'''— S"' 2 "t^ you news of Macclesfield 

developer Pandemonium 
and its new 3-D tank com- 
bat game. Machines of the 
Wastelands. Now, after 
months of coding and 
hundreds of cans of Cola 
and dial-a-pizzas, the 
game is ready. 

Set on a desolate 
planet where tribes of 
Goblins fight each other 

for their world's last resources, the game involves directing a tank about a bar- 
ren desert blowing up everything you lay eyes on. 

It also involves an element of business as well - if you don't pay your crew enough, they will leave your employ, A novel gambling feature 
allows you to recruit crew for almost no cash if your lucky number comes up. 
The game as yet doesn't have a publisher but anybody interested in finding out more about Goblin Tanks should phone: 0161 485 5231 

AMIGA ACTION NEWS 





iWHI'lM 



Vulcan 3D Player 



Vulcan Software has announced it is to release a game creation tool capable 
of creating true 3-D environments. The utility, the Vulcan 3D Player, will allow 
the user to create game environments with 360 degree rotation and up and 
down movements. Corridors, tunnels and crevasses can be built, windows and 
ledges positioned, and the walls and floors given surface textures. 

Objects such as barrels, tables, drinks machines and crates can be added 
and enemies positioned. Enemies can be chosen from the default characters 
supplied, or you can create your own. Intelligence levels can also be deter- 
mined. 

Vulcan hopes that its tool will be used by Amiga aficionados to create their 
own Doom clones, with the finished results being posted on Aminet. Hope- 
fully, custom created games and levels will become as widespread and well 
used as the custom Marathon and Quake levels currently available on the 
Internet. 

Fingers crossed that there won't be any problems with compatibility - the 
utility also supports AGA and 90 per cent of all known graphics cards. 
For more information contact Vulcan at: -http;//www.vulcan.co.uk/ 




Valhalla 5 



Vulcan Software has announced that it is to continue the successful Valhalla series. Valhalla 5 will 
be CD-Rom based and will contain over 50 interactive characters and a vocabulary of 10,000 
words. 

There will apparently be four huge levels each with its own redefined visual screen with cine- 
matic graphics. As with most Vulcan games, Valahalla 5 will be available in English, German, Italian, 
Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch and Danish. 



PULSTAR 



A team of develop- 
ers calling itself 
Fullspeed Creative 
Developments has 
just finished writ- 
ing an old school 
style platform 
arcade blaster. 
Bearing something 
of a resemblance 
to the classic R- 
Type, Pulstar 
requires you to fly 
a starfighter 
through many dif- 
ferent stages on 
various planets. 

Game bosses are the order of the day here with some being so huge they don't fit onto 
the screen. Luckily you'll have the required firepower to defeat these giant sized bad guys 
- Fullspeed Creative Developments say that there game includes the biggest weapon sys- 
tem ever! 

Apparently the game will be released on CD with animated movie sequences, hundreds 
of levels and music direct from CD (16 Bit). 
Check out the Web site at:- http://home.tonline.de/home/fullspeed/ 





F1 Buyout 



The two biggest Amiga licencevvare compa- 
nies in the UK have decided to combine 
their efforts to support the Amiga. After five 
weeks of negotiations, 5th Dimension has 
decided to buy out Fl Licenceware. 

The buyout will result in the establish- 
ment of a new Amiga based licenceware 
company, Fl Software, which will be based 
in Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire. The two 
companies' product ranges will, for the 
moment be kept separate, but will total 
over 200 in number. As well as classic 
games and utilities, new products are under 
development. 

The company will remain 100 per cent 
Amiga dedicated and intends to work on 
developing the American side of its opera- 
tions. 

For more details visit Fl Software's page at: 
http://www.ware5d.demon.co.uk 



Adios my 

AlVllGOS 



Yup, 1 guess you know by now that this is 
our last magazine. I've been working here 
for nearly a year now and have witnessed 
the Amiga story change from one of woe to 
one of hope. 

Amiga has got a rich and powerful owner 
and people all over the world seem to be 
coding some impressive games. BlackBlade 
is set to blow our socks off. Alive is set to 
release some of the best games in recent 
years and Vulcan is continuing to churn out 
quality game after quality game. 

We won't be here any longer but, believe 
me, the future's looking bright, Anyway, so 
long everybody and thank you for buying 
the mag... 



lUfcWS AMIGA ACTION 



ACTION REVIEW 

STRATEGY 







:■,.■'■ ■■:■.;■? •T-v.. •■-•:- •. , ■ f •-■ -J-'fl ^;.'^ •_:■ ':; ■ ■■■•- ■ J» 
J':.;-.;:-'rr,-.'?J--:>L'':-".. M. ;.-.>.■■ ,■^n■•:■7V^ ?;.;•■;;^.<•..;■!L-^-^■.^^.••■■<:^-«t.•.*^^t^i^-i>5 

He's got the whole world in his hands... 
Hugh Poynton plays God for a day 



Some God games let you run a city, some a 
business empire, some even let you dictate 
the fortunes of a country. Sid Meier's Civi- 
lization lets you run an entire race. 

The simple aim of the game is to guide 
your chosen people through millennia of 
human history, it starts 6000 years ago when 
the world's first cities were established and 
you must guide your people through limes of 
hardship, deciding whether or not to make 
war or peace with your neighbours, where to 
establish trade and strive to invent technolo- 
gies that will give your race the edge. The 
game only ends when you send your people 
off to colonise the stars. 

The decisions to make are end- 
less - will your civilisation be 
a ruthless, totalitarian bully 
stale that conquers and 
plunders to gain valu- 
able resources? Or will 
your people be peace- 
ful, achieving the lead 
by trade and scientific 
research? 

Everything has been 
thought out in painstak- 
ing detail. Technological 
advancements and 
progres^M^Oependent 



s^i^l^e) 



on the smallest things. Thousands of years 
ago the Mongol empire became one of the 
largest and most successful warrior civilisa- 
tions because of its invention of the stirrup 
and hence the ability not just to ride a horse 
but to fight from it. The same goes for Civi- 
lization, master the art of horseback riding 
and you'll be given a golden opportunity to 
get one over on other civilisations. Likewise 
mastering other practices and technologies 
will transform your people from a primitive 
tribe to a prosperous empire, to (if you play 
your cards right) a space faring people. 
The way you govern your tribe will influ- 
ence what happens to it in the 
future. Different models of 
government are included in 
the game. A system of 
Monarchy will mean 
that your rule is 
absolute. With the 
help of the upper 
classes or aristoc- 
racy your rule will 
be strong - how- 
ever, the aristocratic 
classes will eat up 
much of your 
resources for the 
upkeep of their military 



OCCC 




Dfcdhesdsy-S^Jii^W 



Ssttlei-s (18 XUTK, (il»M/l»1> 
nilitla a tir-iB, BOrM/I/l) 
PhcawM <S turrj, nOM^lrt/J.' 

Colossus <5d turFW> 




^xiKA! 'i— — — ^1— U' 

^^3£r Moscow Today ^^ 




.! > '2' «iitn Irrtfliciot' uMis 

-:iif:ti«[ 1 ijrt(« 

-I If gajeri.r.«ri( i$ R«[>utJIC--P«r>ocr >c>i 

THouFiueTii tost' I hip 

BeFtlise toriis- +0* 



Some useful info screens 
keep you well informed 

units. 

Just as past kings of England have found 
out, the aristocracy can be your greatest 
weapon and your worst enemy. Communism 
will cut down drastically on corruption but 
have a detrimental effect on trade. Run a 
republic and trade will boom, but senates 
can override any decision you may want to 
take. In a democracy the economic growth is 
very high, allowing you to plough resources 
into scientific research and improving the 
standard of living, but you must keep the 
populace happy or risk a revolution, it's all a 
valuable lesson in politics and a damn sight 
easier than reading Machiavelli's "The 
Prince". 

Civilization is (he God game. It'll take you 
months to master and you're going to have 
to wrap your head around some weighty 
concepts, but it'll be worth it. Other games 
require you to learn reams of stuff about fic- 
tional races and planets. Try your own, you 
might like it. 



THE LOW-DOWN 

PUBLISHER Guildhall 
DEVELOPER Microprose 
COrUTACT 01302 890000 

PRICE £14.99 

DISKS 1CD 



The Russians are 
p-1 revolting! Citizens 



demand new govt. 



Emperor Hugh and his fledgling 
tribe - The Bobbins of Russia 




I 




1 GRAPHICS 


80% 


1 SOUIUD 


86% 


" PLAYABILITY 


94% 


1 DIFFICULTY 


Hard 



OVERALL SCORE 



AMIGA ACTIOni 



ACTION FEATURE 

INTERVIEW 



J" 



3J UV i D 







As I walked into the north-east London Pub 
where I was to interview Alive MediaSoft, 
Itie first thing thai struck me was that (hey ali 
had a look of eager anticipation that made 
them look like kids on Christmas Eve. 

That isn't much of a surprise when you 
consider whai the future holds for Alive 
MediaSoft. The brainchild of two die hard 
Amifia enlhusiasis, Andy Reed and Stephen 




> 



\Jjya 

Alive MediaSoft loolcs set to 
revoiutionise tlie Amiga 
games market - Hugli Poynton 
ii 



Flowers, the new Amiga games company 
looks set to revolutionise the Amiga games 
scene in the next few monlhs. 

It is called Alive because of Andy's frustra- 
tion at the endless stream of "the end is 
nigh, the Amiga is dead" articles appearing 
in the Amiga press. The company has a 
tremendous card up its 
sleeve - a new CD-based 
Macintosh emulator which 
aJlows you to play Mac 
games on the Amiga with- 
out having to ever see the 
Mac OS, programming the 
joystick or leeching speed 
from the game. 

With other Mac emula- 
tors for the Amiga you 
need to create a separate 
file thai works like a hard 
drive on \shich to install 
all the Mac into and then 
you need ihe latest system 
software and install i!. 
Ralher a lot ol work jusi lo 
play a game. Alive will iell 
Mac games with a spcci.il 



emulator disk - all you'll have lo do is click 
the game icon, and you'll be in. Everything 
has been designed to make the process as 
easy as possible. "It's designed for people 
who have never used an Amiga. We've made 
it as easy as we possibly can" says Andy. 
"We have been talking to the various 




AMIGA ACTION FEATURE 



corTifj.inii's \\li(i jiroiliK cii ilu' iirii;in,ii ijai 
And ["(i|nTi;;hi i_sn'l .is iiiin h ni a prolilrirt 
\<i:. il ,il iii>t Ihink. iici iiiis!.' r.ii (otle h.i 
l/t'fii .itlfffd, oikI |[k' CJJs ,infi CD p,](."ka 
infi hflsn'l been changed, c\\\ Aiive is (ioinj! 
in efl'ect is hiiyinK llie CO ,1111 1 s.'iling it on", 
says Andy. Alive is, in el'tri 1, in-.! ptaiining to 
wrap llic CDs in shrink wrap (jLislit ihal will 
h.ive "For tlie Aniiga" on. jl's ,ilf InLiily li'i;<il 
and done with the origin.il publishers', 
vvhethef it be Sierra or LucnsArls, full con- 
sent. 

Tile ti!aul\- nf the Mac emulntor is, pro- 
vidiru, jjiriii.ssion is granted by the various 
publishers, a huge wealth of j(anu's ran now 
be released onto the Amiga. As loni; ,js the 
initial reaction to these Mac releases is 
Snod, .•\live hopes to be abte to bring out a 
new \l,i< u.inie every month. 

Till i Mpiir^mv has a huge stack of sames 
wail- - iM^e and eventually ]>Ians a 

rele.iM- >iidifyy unlike anything any other 
software company has ever attempted. Steve 
says. "VA'e're i;oinR to put out a wish-list say- 
ing, look we have these games, what do you 
uan!? \\p are not (loing to release something 
lh,!l people are not going to buy. We will 
iusi that say we're willing to do these games, 
which do you want? If you want, say, X- 
WinR next month, you'll have X-Wing next 
month." 

Aii\e, however, isn't just going to bring 
out Mac gantes. in addition to the excellent 
looking Haunted, it has got reams and reams 
of storyboards anti ideas for its own games. 
It is also eager to sign any now developers 
for the plalfurni - witii the wealth of talented 
Amiga programmers about at the moment, 
tliey should have no difficulty. "The emula- 
tor will gel us established," says Andy, "once 
we're established we can lake on developers 
and publish their games. We've also got 



i 




loads of games ideas ourselves, we'd 
love to publish a 3-D fighting game." 

Andy and Steve are thrilled at 
the prospect of launching a new 
Amiga games company, and 
rightly so. After months of 
exhaustive research and 
planning. Alive is about to 
embark on stage one of 
its master plan. The Mac 
emulator is ready, 
Haunted is almost 
complete, and the 
market is more than 
ready for Ihem. 
"There are lots of 
utilities and hard- 
ware out there. 
There is not a great 
deal of game soft- 




FEATURE AMIGA ACTION 157 



ACTION FEATURE 

INTERVIEW 



wjre (Hit there and, when voii think about it, 
7ti per (.ent of people want to pla\' games." 
says Andy. 

Whether hv cie!iii;n or hy accident, Alive 
seems to h.ne (_li[)sen the best [jossible lime 
to start up. As the Amiga game.s market starts 
to shake itselr awake after a couple of years 
in a coma, any decent Amiga game will 
make a killing. 

Andv is excited aliout tile rejuvenation oi 
the m.irket - rather than beini; ( cmterned 
about his competitors games titles, he is 
excilecl. "The games will stimulate the mar- 
ket, get more people buying. At the moment 
we have Vulcan's new game, we have Epic's 
ni-w '.',1111-' hlle and Sadness have u"' 'is 'K'"' 
game.. .we have this little wave at the 
moment, but hopefully it'll become a l)ig 
tidai wave - we want to be on the surfboard 
so we can catch that wave." 

Which it undoubtediv will - (-taunted 
looks set 10 be one oi the best atfventure 
games produced in years, with real-time ren- 
dered animated cinema sequences and 
proper FMV sequences. Like other recent 
,\mi,ga games, the quality of Haunted actu- 
ally e\( eeds that of many PC games. 

V\'hy has there been a sort of renaissance 
in Amiga g.imes and why are we seeing a 
profusion of excellent quality games such as 
Shadow of the Third Moon? Anciy believes 
that new titles arc looking so good simply 
because they actually realise the fuil poten- 
tial of the Amiga. In the past, the potential 
was never realised simply due to laziness. 

"The were so many big publishers out 
there that had a perfectly good A500 game 
engine, when the .■\1200 came out they just 




ported it over. Team 1 7 came along and 
brought out Alien Breed .'iD and proved all 
the critics wrong with a decent Doont clone. 
Now you can't just rest on your laurels Mke a 
lot of the big publishers did. You've got to 
really sell yourself. You can now use the 
Amiga to its full capacity, what with all the 
accelerator cards and graphics cards. It's 
now running in the red limit zone. In the 
past it was just ticking along at a 1000 revs." 

Alive is adamant it will not fail into the 
trap other Amiga games manufactures have. 
It shares Vulcan boss Paul Carrington's belief 
that the future for the Amiga is to update and 
that its games must reflect this. "Our games 
will be CD based, they will support PPC," 
says Steve. When pushed as to whether 
Alive will bring out any PPC only games, 




Andy says, "We've heard so many rumours 
about PPC, Amiga International Is umming 
and ahhing as to whether or not to go PPC. 
We are making all of them both 68k and 
PPC. If PPC is the Amiga, then we will be 
PPC." 

So, is breaking into the Amiga games mar- 
ket an intimidating experience? Far from it 
apparently - it seems as though Alive's 
reception into the Amiga games market has 
been a thoroughly pleasant experience. 
Andy and Steve have nothing but praise for 
just about anybody they've dealt with while 
setting up the company. Team 1 7's Andy 
Davidson in particular. "Team 17 was bril- 
liant, Andy said he'd give me any help with 
Lightwave, if 1 needed any tutorials, videos 
or anything to do with Amiga" says Steve. 

Likewise, Vulcan Softvvare couldn't have 
been more helpful. Paul Carrington has 
offered the company advice and practical 
help - even down to offering to burn CDs for 
them. This friendliness isn't just Amiga 
enthusiasts helping each other out, it also 




AIVIIGA ACTIOIU FEATURE 



makes good business sense. "Everybody is 
willing 10 help everybody, because if there is 
no Amiga games market then everybody 
goes out of business" says Andy. Conipanies 
such as Vulcan want and need the competi- 
tion. 

Talking to Andy, Steve and the rest of the 
Alive crew, you get the feeling that the 
Amiga, and the Amiga games market, is set 
for quite a revival. Providing of course, 
Gateway and Amiga International play iheir 
cards right. 

Although Alive is confident about the 
Amiga's future there is an awareness that 
things have got to be done right this time. 
"It's encouraging thai (he Amiga has an 
owner," says Andy about the Gateway buy- 
out, "but this is the third time the company 
has been bought and I think It'll probably be 
the last, if something doesn't happen now, 
they won't have another shot." 

So what would be Alive's dream machine 
then? "We would both like to see both a big 
graphics machine, and also something that's 
smaller and cheaper than the average PC in 
Dixons that would attract mum and dad out 
buying a computer for Christmas. I'd like to 
see a £600 base machine, with an 030 mini- 





mum, CD-Rom and plenty oi expandability ~ 
4Mb only costs about £1 5 now. A base com- 
puter with a little HD and 10Mb of Ram 
would be perfect.' 

Although it's still early days yet, Alive has 
a catalogue of games and a commercial bat- 
tle plan that would make other, bigger soft- 
ware companies go green with envy. But 
they've got another hidden ingredient that 
more or less assures them success. "We will 
never give up" declares Steve. "We are pas- 
sionate about the Amiga lo the point of 
being obsessive, as long as there are people 
out there xvith an Amiga, we'll write games 
for them." 

As ! make my goodbyes and prepare to get 
Ihe tube home, I can't shake the t-jeliny that 
I'm going lo hoar a hell of a lol mnrc about^ 
these guys and all of it's going lo lie good. 



So what has Alive got to offer in the next 
few months? We take a look: 

Phatasmagoria 

Phatasmagoria will be one of Alive's first releases. Squeezed onto a monster 7 CDs, the game vvil 
mum of an 030 processor, quad speed CD-Rom, 8 Mb Ram and 1 5 Mb of hard disk space. 



require a mmt- 



Doom 

ID'S legendary multiplayer shoot 'em-up will be playable with four times the screen resolution of the PC and 30 
rock hard levels. You'll need an 030 accelerator, quad speed CD-Rom and 8 Mb of Ram. 

Haunted 

Alive's 'baby', this game will use FMV, blue screen filming, and real-time rendered animated sequences. For this 
you'll need an 030 accelerator, quad speed CD-ROM and 8 Mb of Ram. 



FEATURE AMIGA ACTION 



ACTION PREVIEW 

WO RK IN PROGRESS 






J 1 j-j: ^ 



We take a look at BlackBlade's 
long awaited futuristic flight sim 



A few months ago, a Web site appeared 
belonging to a group of Italian coders calling 
itself BlackBlade. The Web site I'eaiured a 
series of screenshots that looked far too 
good to be true. Smoke trails, 
dangerous jets swooping dow 
beautiful voxel modelled val- 
leys. To quote Chris Evans, I 
thought, "Never gonna 
happen, never gonna hap 
pen". 

The monlhs wore on 
and eventually we man- 
aged to gel bold of .^ 
beta test version ol the 
game. Being a cynical 
sod, 1 never though 
Shadow of the Third 
Moon would live up to 
the hype. I was convinced 
the thing wouldn't work and 
if it die! it wouldn't be worth 
the code it was written uith. 
front end looked nice, vcr^- r 
was accompanied by some crisji clear 
slightly ambient dance music. That sfill didn't 
prove anything. I needed to actuaily play the 
game. 

Believe me, it does iive up to the hype. In its 
final finished form this game will be the finest 
on the Amiga - even in its beta lest version it 
beats most h.v.vU linwn. 

The grapliK ^ .hl -lunning. They remind mo 
of those computer generations you used to see 
on telly a lew years back where they got pho- 



tos and information from satellites and maps 
and then pieced the riata together to create a 
3-D representation of say Mount Olympus 

Moons on Mars or the San Fran- 
o Bay Area. 
These amazing 



graphics are created using a tool designed 
specifically for the game, BlackBlade's 3DT1S 
(Terrain Imaging System). This has alloweri the 
BlackBlade designers to draw realistic land- 
scapes with much higher definition than clas- 
sic, chunky, A.SOO-like vectorial graphics you 
see on a lot of flight sims. 

The Voxel rendering allows beautiful val- 
leys, peaks and lakes to be created with fanlas- 
tic attention to detail. A lake isn't just biue, it's 
textured with white along the water's edge to 
represent the water lapping the shores of the 
lake. 

The valleys and mountain peaks look just as 
realistic. Fly down a valley at top speed and it 
gives an impression of speed 1 haven't seen in 
other games. Other details that really grab your 
attention are things like the semi-transparent 
smoke that trails from a rocket or a damaged 
fighter or the photo-realistic sky. 

The weapons effects are also top notch. The 



K^[i] 




AMIGA ACTION 





You've quite an stock of weapons with which to load up your fighter 



Shadow's excellent looking menu combines 
simplicity and some excellent graphics 



clostsl tomp.irison I caultl make with other 
games would be Terminal Velocity mixed with 
Comanche and a liberal dose of X-Wing for 
Hooti measure. 

Soundwise, you can't fault it. Obviously this 
is only an early version so not all the sound 
effects are in place jus! yet, but those I've 
heard so far bode well for the 
game. Unleash a rocket and 
you'll hear the roar as it 
streaks towards its targe! 
Blow up an oil tank 
and you'M hear a 
huge, resounding 
boom. A Ja Wipe- 
Out and games of 
I ha! ilk, your 
chaos wreaking 
will he accompa- 
nied with dance 
music. Unfortu- 
nately there's no 
Leftfield or Under 





An example of what can be done with BlackBlade's 3DTIS 



world here, but the coders who've done the 
music are still pretty skilled. Despite them 
something of a duff name (The SoundWavers), 
the tunes aren't bad at all. 

The game looks the bees knees at the 
moment but, as il is slill a beta test version, 
there is only one mission and that is 
agains! a ground based target 
with no aerial opposition. 
This is fine for checking 
out the graphics, the 
various weapons 
and the control 
systems of the 
plane but il only 
hints at the 
game's full 
potential. 
This game 
could be 
immense. The 
long valleys and 
towering peaks 
would be 
absolutely ideal for 
aerial battles - you'd 
have to take into con- 
sideration loads more 
tactics than the average 
flight sim because, in 
addition lo belting 
afong at a furious 
speed, your vehicle can 
.^.^ hover and even fly 
*| backwards. You could 
"; have games where you 
hover behind a peak 
and po[) up to take out 
the enemy. 

Surprisingly the 
game isn't that system 
hungry. Although you 
will get the best resuits 
on a very high speed 
machine, the version 
we got our gnjbfay mitts 





...can't see any ramblers though 

on ran along at about 1 2 frames per second on 
our 040 A4000. According to the developers 
the game Is perfectly playable at any speed 
above 6 fps. You should be able to milk drat 
sort or performance out of an 030 processor 
with 4Mb of Ram. The game supports PPC and 
pretty much any gra|)hics card you'd care to 
mention. 

This really is the sort or gami> llic ,\mig,i 
needs at the moment. It looks as lliough il is 
going lo be fanlasSic in its own ri.ijhl i)ut it'll 
also be a showcase for the sort of games you 
can create for the machine and sel a standard 
for other devclofiers to ;isj]ire In, The release 
date is in August so upgrade ycmr niachiiie and 




Crashed! Time to pick another plane 



AMIGA ACTIOni 




\ 



Part t;.^o of our 
Adventlire cheat 

The story so far - Doug has just.fompleted 
two of the three questions be needs to enter 
the KCB TV quiz show. 

The Park 

Go back up to your hotel room and retriev 
your computer. Walk off to Gorky Park wfth 
_ the computer - fn the centre of the park you 
'wilt find a small boy. He's playing a cheap 
hSpd held Russian game console. Swap your 
ex|jlti5ive computer for the cheapo console 
and wBnder off... 

Wher't|leaving Gorky Park you wilt talk to a 
street husflfer trying to sell you a knocked off 
watch. DonT"huy it but remember where you 
saw him for fuhire reference. Head off to the 
railway station aniiiind the cash point 
machine. Stick the^nsole cartridge into the 
card slot and you will Bb allowed to withdraw 
1 00 roubles. %_ \ 

You will come back to thesja^jon later in 
the game, but for now head hadtfta the park 
after noticing the KGB TV buitdinfi'lLnext to 



Big Red 
guide 




ija^on lat 
acNAothe 
ldinglLn( 



the station. On your way to the park, stop by 

the huge queue and talk to the man with the 

big beard. Ask him to buy a tin of c 

return for a loo roll. Go back to thej[ifl« and 

buy some bog roll from the sire 

this will cost you the 100 routfPs from the 

cash point 

'oil, head back to 
le tin of caviar. Now 
''the answer to ihe final 
'cket. There aren't any Rs 
It you know all three 
back to the hotel foyer, 
back at the hotel lobby, go 
ask to borrow a pen to fill 
ticket to fill it in and 
nvelope in your 
■ fill out the address. 
Next, select the stamp froiXvour inventory in 
order to post the ticket correGtly. 

Leave the hotel and go to th'&KGB Studios, 
located next to the Rail Station, VTUier^OiLael 
there, post the tetter. Now rush baSt? 



Once you have the 
tniliflueue to swap it fi 
examtae (he tin to 
questi^ton Ihe Ire 
on the laHiy! Now 
answers, go-it/aig 

Once you aly 
up to the porter 
in the ticket. Sel 
then put the ticket 
inventory, using the 



hotel and ask pie porter if ill; 

lU. He will m 

e Studio. 

Open the rep! 

le Russian DoJI 

aste tim 
hand in the 
you a badge and 
the show. When 
straight on air 

There are th#c questions about 
answer and, rfynu answer them correctlj 
go on to an|fter the big question i 
air balloo^lf you didn't answer j 
tions corrjctly, you can still gel^rough the 
game - jjEt follow our handy hftts: 







If you I 

Co bac!^ the hotel room and enter the toilet 
after cotllcting your prize and adding the stu- 
dio lightsTj) your invs 
new scenerigh abov 
loon. Fly to fie museu 
Once inside nje museum, | 
room and switlk on the ligh 
This blocks outfflt photo cell 
alarm going off. i 

Now go into the riekt room and combine 
the cassette with the rMorder and use it. This 





Wow, Big Red Adventure made me laugh Buy the mags,''j^u'll find them all usjf ui 

^Zl AMIGA ACTION TIPS 



\ 



tfik 




TH^WCm^iliy^ijnds of opera, 
Sreaking the glass cases irim^TBajress. Now 
pick up the ring and computer an^kinto the 
crown room. ^u 

Select the diamond ring and use it ^^ 
on the crown case to cut a hole 
in the giass. The crown is now 
ready to be snatched but 
unfortunately not by you 
another thief suddenly 
appears and snatches 
the crown from under 

yourn^ 

in 
tTel room again, with 
your picture in every, 
n 
rau have ti^^^ 

Huuiow? 
Firstly, go to the 
newsagents and buy a copy 
of Consolphobia magazine. 
Examine it and find that the pa; 



word for (he 
Trotsky's 
mainframe 
computer is 
the name of 
the tenor who 
sings with 
Donna Calalel 
the Bolshoi. 
Leave the hotel 




Doug 1 



. his charms on the receptionist 



and head down t^he burger place where you 
meet some dodgy frVids, Alex and Kos. They 
tell you that they haAa plan to break into the 
Trotsky software mainmme and that they want 
you to do it. In return tney will give you a 
passport so you can le^e Moscow before 
arrested 

They j?^^^e|jjl^ou that the mainframe 
computer is onTTieVVorld-wide Communica- 
tion Network and that their e-mail address is 
LLenin.Komm. Head back to your hotel room 
I combine the TV remote control with the 
tap?%£prder and then attach that to the 
ZX81 

You now^^e to find the mode number 
the WWC Netwfck. To do this, go to thg 
Studios and exanirSt the receptioad<'Sk to 
find a scrap of papenkpok aykSl piece of 
paper to gain the Inlefle^Wress for the 
WWC Network, whi^ffn<GB.NET 007 6 1 0. 

Now you car^^e it on the telephone in 
your hotel nj^l^to get the tape recording for 
Alex an|H^5. Take the tape to Alex and Kos to 
jr pass[X)rt and then head swiftly to the 
"tion and show your passport to the guard in 
order to board the Orient Express and get the 
hell out of there! 

If You Lose The Quiz 

You win a consolation prize of a keyring and 

you are left in the studio. Pick up I 

lights and use the keyring on the 

order to enter a secret 

museum. Once inside the 

crown room and switch 

crown. This stops the 

next room and coi 

recorder and thej 

follow the pri 

Win' sol 

fCA ACTION 



er fot^^^ 




w 



FEATU RE 




Duke on the Amiga? Well, nearly. 



You're either a dog person or a cal person. You 

either like the RollinR Stones or The Beatles. 

You're a Qualce tan or a Duke fan. It's jus! one 
, of those things, you can't like both. 
Whereas Quake has always won fans 

hecause of its dark, sinister graphics and 

atmospheric sound effects, Duke is a lighter, 
'airier, nnore tongue in cheek shoot 'em-up. 

The ftnme ha^. won legiofis of fans 

ber.uihf ot lis tun, slightly tasteless 

take on the J-D shooter. Your 

Ray Bans and machine gun 

toting hero spits otil witty 

quips and one liners as he 

dispatches hordes of furry 

aliens and innocent 

bystanders alike. 

The weapons he uses 

to do this differ frnni the 

rather seriotis Quake 

armoury by including a 

number of hizarre and 

downright stupid guns and 

Iwmbs. The self explanatory 

Shrinker Ray for example. 



reduces the enemy to the size of an action 
man so you can defeat him jusi by stomping 
on him. 

Getting Duke Nukem 3D (anc! Quake) onto 
the Amiga has been something of a Holy Grail 
to Amiga developers - and now, both have 
been successfully ported. A few weeks ago, 
Amiga enthusiast John Selck 
announced that he had 
ported the Duke 
Nukem 3D games 
engine over to 
the Amiga. 
Obtain a PC 
copy of Duke 
Nukem, 
pinch the 
group files 
and hey 
presto, you 
can wander 
about any 
Duke level at 
will. There's 
nothing (o shoot 




As you can see, even in low res mode the 
Duke play environment looks fantastic 



The walkthroughs run at a 
tremendous speed 



AMIGA ACTION FEATURE 




Let's hope we see more of 
Duke on the Amiga 



and il isn't a game by any standards but ii . 
paves the way for greater things. 

For a start it will convince those who 
thought otherwise that a PC game can work on 
an Amiga. Unlike the ported Amiga Quake 
{which ran so slowly you could see each and 
every bullet plod towards you at snail like 
speed), Duke ran on the on She office 040 
A4000 at a perfectly smooth sfieed. However, 
the Duke walkthroughs don't contain any ene- 
mies, which is apparently the most system 
hungry single elenjent of most games. 

At the moment nobody knows whether the 
Duke engine will be developed any further. 
Although it is a lair bel that every major Amiga 
developer will be interested in a full port of 
Duke to the Amiga, the legal problems that 
haunted the Quake port could str!! trouble 
Duke. 

Hovfever, with 3-D shoot 'em-ups proving 
to be a popular project for Amiga games devel- 
opers, how long win it be before the platform 
has its own answer to Duke or Quake on the 
PC or Marathon on the Mac? If some of the 
new projects emerging come to fruition, such 
as Genetic Species or Brainkiller, ihe answer 
would have to be, not long... 




8y pressing the delete and help keys^< 
you can fly through the levels,.. 



ACTION REVIEW 

FLIGHT SI M U LATOR 



Six years ago, you'd be forgiven for thinking 
that Microprose made nothing but flijihl sims. 
Retired Air Force colonel 'Wild' Bill Sicaly 
seemed to be amassing his very own digital 
airforce. Any neu^KjjBggfering into the fray 
would have to be^^^H^Hgl to have been 

ship 2000 was. 

Mixing the Microprose y* 

attention to detail and real- / 
ism with the need for a / 
fast and furious game, the / 
chopper sim offered play- I 
ers the opportunity to fly \ 
one of six different heli- \ 
copters in combat in six com- \^^^ 
bat zones. 

The six helicopters - the Blackhavvk, ^ 

jetranger Kiowa, Hughes Defender, Apache, 
Commanche and Cobra all have different 
strengths and abilities. Each chopper denotes 
a different type of mission. Pick the Black- 
hawk and you'll be doing a search and rescue 
mission, pick a jetranger Kiowa and you'll be 
doing recon. All the others are ideally suited 
to blowing the crap out of things. 

To give the game an additional element of 
challenge, you must attain certain ranks 
before flying certain helicopters like the Com- 



Hugh Poynton fiddles 
with his chopper (stocic 
helicopter joke 1243...) 



manche or Apache Longbow. Likewise, only 
two combat zones, the Gulf and Western 
Europe, are open to you until you have 
proved yourself in battle. 

The graphics are, even by modern stan- 
dards, excellent. Although lacking in texture 
mapping or detailed voxel landscapes, 
-•*«v. Gunship 2000 uses thousands of 
>^ different tiles to create an 
_-- \ unevenly contot|red|pla)ipg - 



'] action takes pTace at tree " 
/ top level, the ground detalj 
A is superb, follow a road to 
you target destination and 
_/ telegraph poles will flash past 
'^^ your helicopter. 
" The whole thing is very realistic and 

well thought out. Copyright protection, for 
instance, is weaved into the game. You've got 
to feed the correct numbers into your GPS 
system before you can get the helicopter off 
the ground. Unlike other sims of (he time, 
Cunship also allows you to direct other units 
to the target so you can end up co-ordinating 
a big task force to the required area. 

This attention to detail and the huge 
amount of options available means the game 
retains its long term appeal; no matter how 




good you get, there will be still more to 
accomplish. Unlike its contemporaries, Thun- 
derHawk and LHX, the game could take 
months to complete because once one heli- 
copter and combat environment is mastered, 
there are dozens more to try. Get good 
enough at Gunship and you'll be flying a state 
of the art Commanche. In addition to this, dif- 
ficulty levels can be toggled so there are 

""ijferse "•"Mnnrijlinrni ir j highly trained 

emies to over* 



"Although probabiy°nof the' game oT choice' 
fgr somebody who wants rather more arcade 
oriented action, Gunship 2000 is an excellent 
challenging and very absorbing sim. If you're 
a propeller head, go buy it. 

THE LOW-DOWN 

PUBLISHER Guildhall 
PUBLISHER Microprose 
CONTACT 01302 890000 
PRICE £14.99 
DISKS 4 



GRAPHICS 


92% 


SOUND 


90% 


PLAYABILITY 


92% 


DIFFICULTY 


Tricky 



OV ERALL SCORE 



As you can see the attention to detail is 
excellent - all those dial things do stuff! 



The main options screen alJows you to pick 
the helicopter and the ordinance it will carry 



FEATURE AMIGA ACTION 



mmm 




A 



ACTIO N PREVIEW 

,^...._,mMHiLiiB^ DVENTURE 






i 







Sixth Sense investigations is I he latest offer- 
tnj from Epic. As you tniglil remember, Eptc 
has deirded lo start releasini> continental 
games in Ihc UK and new releases fr p^ 
European developers. This offering c**"^ 
from the home of dodgy bank accoui 
the Milka Cow, Switzerland, „ 

CineTECH, the developer hehiiidf 
Sense hnesligalion!^, has apparent ^ 
inspiration from (he classic Lucas^JH ; 
poinl'n'click adventure games sucli aTKldn- 
key Island. Prescn led in a suitahle cartoon 
style, (he game follows n crazy young guy 
who has the ability lo communicate vvilh Ihe 
spirit of a sarcastic man. A friend (who 
thinks of himself as a detective) profits from 
these psychic abilities. Quite predictably this 
leads them into craaty, I'unny situations 
which don't help in their quest to make 
money. All of which goes towards making 
the game sound utterly tediotis. 

Everything looks very nice. The graphics 
are bubbly and colourful and the characters 
and scenery all capture the attention. The 
mairi protagonist - the crap detective - 
looks suitably crap. Hunched over, hands in 
Mac he looks like a cross between Ihe dou- 




ble entendre laden deletli*»IW»m the Robin- 
son's ad and Tosh Lynes from the Bilt. t'ipe 
in mouth, he scurries from crime scene lo 
crime scene. ~" 

The various locations are fun - there's the 
rich American's Cheese Production Facility, 

n m.i,t nfnf,iccni*'«: t.^hv^rsffirv .inH n fiw fztr- 



tory. The finished game will boast 32 differ- 
ent location on three different worlds so 
there should be a fair amount of depth to 
the game. 

There are some nice little 
touches - the point and click 
action commands such as 
'jpick up" and "talk" arc 
jgll niessily scrawled . 

dcross the bottom of / 
the screen on what 
looks like a strip of 
lined paper from a 
note book with ink 
spots aplenty. The 
music puis you in 
mind of a bungling \ 

detective (Imagine Ihe \ 
Detectives tune crossed \ j 
with the Inspector Clue- >v = 




office's 020 A'^H^BBB)fi|ibIem and the 
game characlc^SmS^iWund Ihe screen 
like rabbits on ani|)hetail^|s. According lo 
CinpTECH Ihe fii^pU'.^ilirefsion of the 

ay on any A1200 
or 4000 Willi iMb kAi^t and a CD-Rom 
drive. 

i'kMvanI though the game looks and plays, 

.1. 1 — drawbacks. Firstly, it will 

9.99 - a lot of moolah lo 
slicll out for a game. To be 

totally honest, Sixth Sense 
~ Investigations doesn't look 

\' as if it is worth £29.99 - 
it doesn't have (he same 
wry humour or charac- 
I terisalion as Big Red 
Adventure and, more 
1 importantly, just docs- 
/ n't look of Ihc sa 

/ standard. If point ' 

/ clicks are your cup of 
/ tea, give this game a go. ' 
/ If not, keep your wallcl inj 
»/^ your pocket. 




The Private Detectives chaotic offfte - still 
it isn't as messy as the AC offices! 



This is the Private Dicks stomping ground, 
avirretched den of scum and villainy 



At the toy factofy Private Dick quizzes a 
suspect who rants on about giant toys in 
pyjamas ~ nictc him for possession!. 



AMIGA ACTIOni REVIEW 



ty®^"^r'-"^%'; 



-i.^^T'.SOi. :. 



REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL 

In l/iese 'interesting' times for ihe Amiga computer, HiSoft would like to express its total commitment lo the Amiga and its users. And 
what better way than offering you the best software and hardware products at unbeatable prices! 



^lyins^f 



snuj 






The Classic Squim'l dnd the Surt Squirrel have revolutionisetf ihe way you use 
yoifr A1200 iirifl AfiOO cornfjutcrs, making il ijusiiljlu tn add up lo 7 SCSI 
devices such tis hard drives, sctinners, Zip drives, CD-I^OMs He. Wilh SCSI 
you i^et A complele, easy-to-fit .ind easy-Uj-usc sy^lem that is fast, relitible iinri 
expandiible. And now il's i-vcn more alhirdalil*' th.ir> i'\er' 

As the developers of the famous Stjuirrel t^^ 
SCSI interfaces we have been able to 

shave margins to Ihe bone and bring . 

some unbeatable CD-ROM deals. _ .„.-...a-^ - 

lusl look at whatyou gel in eai'h of 1 

(HJr great Squirrel CD-ROM s *_!^ " 

paiks: " ■' . ■JimiJy,--J,^k P " 

• Choice of internal or extern, il 
CD-ROM dnve. 

• Choice of 2-speed, 4-speed or 1 2-spee(l drives. 

• Choice of Classic Squirrel or Suff Squirrel interfaces. 

• Choice of i FREE CD titles to get you started. 
^ Power lead arul cables where appropriate. 

• Full manuals on how to set up .ind use your new equipment. 

• Extensive after-sjles supptjrt, direct from HiSoft. 

All you have to do Is pick up the phone and call {lur friendly sales staff, free 
of charge - we will advise you tjn the best choice for your system and put 
together the best St|uirrel CD-ROM pack you can buy. 



"iSif^ 



Thf revniution.iry Zi|> drivt- trnm 
lomcg.i is one of ih*- miijor 
It'chntilogical ciLnelupmL-nts tJt the 
'J(K, ^nci it works perfectly on your 
Amiga with HiSoft's tailor-made 
Squirrel Zip kit. 




choKcoi imi n>i''i LH'^iMS 

Squirrel CD4X ta.'. CD2X but wiih <^i ifua<J--,f>n'd CO-HUMi L 1 -49.9.3 

Squirrel CD^ 2X(ds CD2X. ixtt wiih ukfs-f^ ^2-^M-ii CD-ROhh £239-95 

buri Squirj'el (Option ifM.^!*TW_>j(!/[(w*»irj-fesr «-r,r.*J intt-n^e; - £30.00 

Inl^rtUtl Dptifhn iinrmmf, m UMi-r (.ji^c nt ^nunMn ,.,nct -£35.0U 





SQUIRREL 






ZIF»100 PACK 






The complete ZiplOO pack for any 
SCSI-aWtirt' Amiga computer: 
V* Zip Drive including; 1 tarlridge with PC/MdcZip T(X>ls, 
25-way to 25-w.iy SCSI lead, manuals etc. 






i(^ HiSt>ft Arnica Zi[j hiols softwart^ with Ainiga-spt't ifir 
user m.uuial. 






^ Special 2S-vvav to 5()-wdy converter lor use with 
Squirrel SCSI or other SCSI peripherals. 




• 


^ £ia9^ Bias"" ^ 




* * 


for cxtstina SCSt with Classic SQuirrct * 

• 



M 



iEdSliPN 



'LturiTilt-D titliv<irKliid<' ACiAfKpcrn'iHr 1, GJolwl Arni^j txpiTicrKL*, CrjniKljm QimL-r trtilil. 
SiiVti'i Toiifh, VVunn'riof theWebA: \hv K.*r.i Colkttion 



2-5peecl CD-ROM 

Classic Squirrel 

3 CD Titles 



This aniaziiiH-value prinler allows truly stunning phnto-realislii: c]iiislity, 
wnh no banding, when useduith the Canon Studio software package. 

This pack includes printer, Amiga printer lead. Canon Studio ,ind 
free photo-realistic cartridge offer. 

i9S 



Clnemaao CO Etiitian £133.39 

The Whippet ct9.3s 

Megalosauntl CZ9.9S 

Clarity 16 Sampler E33.9S 

ProMlDl Interface csa.as 

Media MJiCIC C33.9S 

Maxon MaCie CI3.3S 

Oisk MaCIC 2 CS9.9S 

nvfsr s aatahase CS9.3S 

vermlte Comms C19.3S 

TermlteTCP C39.9S 

IBrau/se 1.11 C23.35 

Nets Web 1 CZ3.3S 

NetSWeb X CS9.9S 

Web Explosion CD zaa.BS 

Personal faint 7.1 CD C2a.3S 

Oeupac 3 assembler £49.95 

HighSpeea Pascal ce9.9S 

StvUlo 2 Caa.9S 

PraPlight C19.3S 

SMD-100 3 1 UideoCOs C1G3.9S 




Confused by all the hype about the inlernet? We're not surprised. Bui heie is ihe no-nonsense, 
(|uitk6tart pa( k thai contains all you need to conned, lo send and receive email, to transfer files, 
lo access those essential newsgroups and lo browse the worki wide web. The brand-new Enterprise 
Nei&VVeb p.K k is a Ixeeze to inst.ill and a joy to use - here's what vou i;et: 



ENTERPRISE 

NET&WEB PACK 

• .i^i.libps lavA/oice Modem - cream 
l/ Motlem l\ telephone leads 

t^ Ea.sy install progriini 

• Free 30-day Irial account 
with Demon Interne! 

• Nel&VVeb Software 

FTP We (ransfcr 
HiSofl KUil vrnaii 
t8fO\Y^f ttruwwr 
Usenet n(.'wsTeadi^r 



BS 



I I I I r I < t I 



— ENTERPRISE - 
NET&WEB+ PACK 

Everything in the Enterprise Net&VVeb 
Pack (seelefll/j/i/s 

• TermiteTCH 

soflware thai 
supports ppp for 
connection to any 
ser\'tce provider. 

• .Amj^'.i .Siirftn' Bixik, lull 
01 inviiluable info on ide 
interne). 



95 J 



SYSTEMS 



!& ^^4(0) 1555 /JSI8J ■ fax +JJ {G) )5;5 /i37;6 



TO ORDER CMLL OSOO 22S BGO 

"II (1.* UK m. CM. ta ur™„,; u, h, e^rt ,,„.«. IV, ,h„ .«.,« cft«,,«, fYJ, ,„d MrMpuKhJs,, '^riel c MSil, m? f^M ' 



SiiMli»|€L 




^'SmitfMP 






Miikc my own CDs? No, too expensive. Well, not any more 
with Ihe lirLintl-nevv SqutrrelCDR system, crombining <i 
l)rilli.iiil, 2-sp(H'd write, ti-spced re.icl CDR drive with itie 
excellent commercial version of MakeCD, Ihe .SquirrelCDR 
system is unbeatable - jusl look at what you can do: 

• Backup 650MB of hard disk in under -10 minutes. 
»/ Write up to 10D sessions per disc. 

»/ Create your own multimedia discs. 

»/ Create your own music discs. 

• Uack-up CD-ROMs. 

• Back-up audio discs. 
•" Back-up consoie games. 

• Play CD:i2 discs. 
v/ Play audio discs. 

• B<ick-up ANY compaf:t disc! 

^ Create Mac / PC discs on your Amiga. 

• Create mixed audio /data discs. 

^ Oeale boolable CD32 discs-perfect for demos! 

• Plav CD-ROMs at yOOklJ per second. 

• Access all sessions of a PhotoCD. 

Ideally suited for the Squirrel SCSI interfaces on the A1 20t), 
the St|uirrelCDK will also work on most SCSI-aware Amij^as. 




SquirrelCDR .XL (wirm^tkive. MjtK.IJ, Satl5qmn-I, 'i^MtUih.i £469.93 
SquirruiCDR CT (tw iWve, M^eU). ,5 goW d/ste, w/u Sa; i/CjceJ 099.9.5 
SquirrelCDR I limanal rirm; MakeCD, .■!(,«« tlisfa. \w/a SCSI ilfjcf!) £349.95 
MilkeCD (full version wtlh msnual. ku ptivule u^} £39.95 

Cold Disk «Mynii!,mi.il.6iO\ibijp^:tyi £4.95 



Wtilppet 

The Whippet is a fully buffered, ultra high 
speed serial port capable of performing up 
to 400% faster than the A1 20()'s serial port. 
Data transfers with The Whippet are 
guaranteed to be much faster, much safer 
,ind much more reliable than when using 
[he standard Amiga serial pod. 

The Whippet really comes into its own 
when surfing the Internet. High speed 
drivers allow the use of web browsers, ftp 
clients, email clients, Usenet readers and 
other Internet tools, ail at the same time 
without loss of data— and with multitasking! 

COMPATIfiLE WITII 

• All Amiga networking software. 

• All Amiga Internet software. 

• All Amiga communications sot'tware. 

FEATURES 

• I ligh performance serial port, up to 
400% faster than the Amiga serial port. 

• The Whippet is fully buffered for safer 
and reliable data transfer. 

• Up to 230,000 bps data transfer rale. 

• Industry' standard 9-pin serial socket. 

• ')-pin to 23-pin modem lead included. 




We are delighted to announce the immediate availabilit\' of the 
CD Edition of the acclaimed CINEMA 4D raytracing package. 
The CD Edition includes a brand-new version of CINEMA 4D, 
many more textures, scenes and objeds (>200 predefined 
materials, >400 bitmap lexturesl and, as a special FREE 
bonus, CinemaWORLD and CinemaFONT are 
included! 

For (hose who already know CINEMA 4D, here 
are some of the new features: 

• fiBOfiO suppor! - render up to 100% faster. 
l/* New Material Manager inc material previews. 

• Materials now support colour, luminance, 
transparency, reflectivity, environment, fog, 
bumf) mapping, genlocking, highlights and 
highlight colouring as separate attributes. 

• Unlimited number of materials on an object. 

• Lighting system supports visible light, lens flares, 
glows, reflections, soft and hard shadows, conical, 
parallel, decreasing and fixed intensity light. 

• Camera supports defjth of field tilurnng and lens 
adjustment to allow fisheye, wide angle or lelephoto lenses. 

• Internal CyberCraphX support. 

j/ Palette sharing on 256 colour screens. 

CINEMA 4D has a long history on the Amiga, being used all over the world 
by graphic studios, architects, television companies and enthusiastic amateurs. 
Now its pedigree has been realiserl by the Macintosh and PC world who have 
raved about it \'^y"« - MacFormat). Call us for a special cross-platform price. 

UPGRADE PRICES 

Uer 2 to CO EHitlon Cea 
Uer 3 to CD EtIStion £29 




B'mma 






As a ^pvt.iiit thank you In ai7 
thv loyjl r\miga Computing 
restkrs, we are offering a 5% 
extra gtHir/bye discount on all 
products adverliifd on this 
page Jnd in our o(/;cr ad 
fprei ious page,), lust mulliply 
all prices (except carririgy,) by 
O.'A'j til get your s/iecia/, hw 
price. Please quote ACIiB32 
iv/ien ordering. Offer duses 
JO September my". 

TO ORDSn 

Vou cm OTiier iiwr the 
telephone on our ( reeCall 
numlifr 1)500 223 bhO using 
any pojiutar credit or debit 
card or you can send us an 
order through the post with a 
chttfue/po.siaf order See our 
ad tin (he previous page for 

nmre details. 
Or tinlur ori our webpagv... 

winiiniirJiisoft.eo.uk 



The worki famous t^lizzard 1230/IV .'iOMHz accelerator 
board is now available from HiSoft at a new, even lower 
price. Trust HiSoft to bring you the best 
Amiga products at truly affordable prices 
and with full technical support from 
Amiga experts. 

This is the highest performing 

68030 expansion you can buy 

for your Al 200 and we can "' ■• 

now offer it with a range of 

options to give you maximum 

choice - whichever way you go, 

you can be assured of top quality, fully 

warranted products with complete after-sales 

service from HiSoft. 




I i'fi;ti iiisH iiiiii.s 
mTiit:*>:iiv bli/xird 



Blizzard 1210-IV lOKIb. W>,IHifiS030it,IMU. 32-M FaitRA\f, 

wp,!iidahlf up ft! 1 2S/2.S(i,Vf6) £99 .95 

Blizzard 12;)ll-IV 4Mb n'.isi. «)ns SIM.M iiir/ui.W(, tiiifd) £119.95 

Blizzard t J304V 8Mb *sr, 6ani SIMM imt\iikil. t,mtl) £t 39.93 

Blizzard I 230-iV 1 6Mb fijsr, (jOns SIXfM intlwfKl, fmedi £169.95 

50MH2 FPU Co-Processor (wften purchmt/ isir/i UJO-ft) £29.95 



BLIZZARD 

COLD PACK 

Bliz/,inl 12 :U)-IV awh S 1PU & Surf Squirrel £229.951! 



Bye-bye Amiga Computing 
from all iff us at HiSoft 
see you In the future? 




•iifjAl-ft